It's easy to understand why Bates Dance Festival invites Bebe Miller Company back year after year. Miller, a professor at Ohio State University, composes dances of tenderness and meaning, and gathers together dancers of transcendent artistry.

Miller presented "Necessary Beauty" at Bates College over the weekend. An evening-length work co-commissioned by the festival, this piece is a captivating collage integrating expressive movement with visual art, textual narrative and live electronic music.

Six female dancers – Angie Hauser, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Kristina Isabelle, Cynthia Oliver, Yen-Fang Yu and Miller herself – moved sinuously, joyfully, sorrowfully and could have had question marks for their eyes and bodies. Relationships were explored, and so was individuality, in tender communication among the dancers.

Each wore a different costume style, from a bright red jumpsuit to a floating white dress. Each had a unique physicality, from petite to statuesque, and a unique movement personality. They represented what appeared to approach a 30-year age range. All of this diversity created an unusually textured performance.

For most of the piece, the choreography was different for each dancer and yet consistently complementary. One leaned in slow motion toward the floor, while another gently gyrated and the next turned or jumped. As the arm of one entered the space of the next, it seemed an inevitable part of the overall work of art to have that arm just there, just then.

Any few minutes of this piece could have been extracted as a movement study. Yet, taken as a whole, it floated by with technical details and transitions invisible.

They danced in front of two large screens, with projections of changing images created by Vita Berezina-Blackburn and Maya Ciarrocchi. Simple rippling water was replaced by storm clouds, which morphed gradually and imperceptibly into a cliff landscape (by painter Albert Bierstadt).

A door opened to show a beach scene and then city traffic; architectural shapes suddenly revealed a sculpted angel. The dancers' faces were displayed, as snippets of recorded interviews (by author Ain Gordon) were played, revealing memories of families taking shape, and the emergence of their own individuality.

Although the dance was choreographed, there was improvisation in the solos and in the music, giving a sense of immediacy. Composer Albert Mathias sampled from music created during rehearsals and from the interviews, while playing live percussion on the electronic Zen drum and creating new passages electronically.

While the piece was emotionally absorbing, precise meaning was often elusive.

For a moment we knew the story – Hauser was a child challenging her mother or questioning her personal boundaries, Hermesdorf tried to make the parts of her body work together – and then meaning fled and we were absorbed again in the purely visceral appreciation of these marvelous dancers moving in space.

Miller's dancers are contributors, not merely a canvas for the choreographer, and each brings an active, individual voice to the artistic whole. They show rich movement vocabulary and a freedom of expression that makes them captivate physically and emotionally without appearing to be striving for virtuosity or dramatic effect. (It's almost a surprise to see perspiration rise on their backs.)

The age of some of the dancers was integral to this richness. Mature artists know their instruments well, and watching them can be revelatory.

At the end of the evening, Miller gave each performer a framed photograph. At least one dancer was moved to tears by this presentation, underscoring the very personal nature of their interaction.

Performing together in such emotional and physical tune requires an intimacy of body and mind that both interconnects the performers and emanates from them to an audience privileged to be part of their world for an evening.

Jennifer Brewer of Saco is a freelance writer, teacher, musician and dancer.

Copyright © 2010 MaineToday Media, Inc.

<< back to story >>