mirodancetheatre.org

In this week’s City Paper, I interviewed Miro Dance Theatre choreographer Amanda Miller about her upcoming work-in-progress, How Am I Not Myself? The piece, which she performed last night with classical Indian dancer Viji Rao, is a reflection on the two dancers’ realization that, despite their differences, they’re really quite alike:

When Miller met Rao, she probably felt like she was stuck in a modern-dance Parent Trap: Despite their differences in race, gender and hemisphere, the two had led eerily identical lives — same birth week, same dance background, same shift from classical to contemporary.

Even if you missed last night’s Open Studio Series at Girard College, you can still follow Miller and Rao on their travels to India — they’ll be video-blogging, and we’ll be stalking them and reporting back periodically on their experiences. Till then, check out my Q&A with Miller, and visit mirodancetheatre.org if you want to help them in their fundraising efforts. (Donate $250 or more and Miro will take a personalized photo for you each day they’re in India; donate $1,000 or more and you’ll get your own dance video. Pretty cool.)

City Paper: How did you come to the realization that despite being from such different backgrounds, you had a lot in common with Viji?
Amanda Miller: Viji and I met when Miro was putting together Principles of Uncertainty for the 2007 Live Arts Festival. Miro was looking for dancers from all disciplines who were interested in experimental work and Viji fit that bill perfectly. Curing the process she and I started talking about our work and our dance traditions and then it became clear that we were having some of the same dilemma in terms of our work. Some would say it was too conventional or classical and others would say it was too modern or experimental. I think it was actually Tobin [Rothlein] who started asking us questions about our lives and how we each got to this point in our careers and that is when we found the stranger similarities — born a few days apart, started dancing at the same age, had our first big performance at the same age, both started working with more contemporary work in London, and so on.

CP: Where’s the piece now in terms of theme and content? Where do you hope the piece will be in the coming months?
AM: The show contains elements of our dance histories from the story ballets and dance dramas of our particular training, to our own style of contemporary choreography. The main theme is about transformation, about creating something new for yourself. We hope that this piece will go beyond our personal stories and resonate with audiences both in India and the U.S.

CP: Since you’re both moving from classical to contemporary, and since the piece is a work in progress, should audiences expect a lot of improvisation and/or experimentation in your work? It almost seems like,  after years as classical dancers, you’ll be finding your contemporary feet together, which should be interesting.
AM: Part of the creation process has actually been about finding our contemporary feet together. We have been having a true dialogue, through dance, where we found that in order to understand how the other thinks about contemporary we needed to understand the rules of their classical. If it is about breaking free from the rules then it is important that we know what those rules are. So I have learned some Bharatanatyam and Viji has learned some ballet. In addition to that we have been challenging each other to go further in our contemporary explorations. This process has allowed us to play with the other’s style and find something within ourselves or our own style that might relate. And that sparks a nice conversation about how each of us thinks of contemporary, and how each of us uses or discards the classical in that thinking. From these conversations Viji and I created a dance that melts and morphs between classical ballet, traditional bharatanayam, and our own contemporary dance styles. It is challenging for us both and has been a lot of fun to put together.

CP: Anything else you want us to know about the work?
AM: Tobin Rothlein is writing and directing, and making sure that we don’t get too serious. Viji and I can get deep into our conversation and Tobin reminds us that it is all a bit absurd and that we should keep acknowledging that aspect of our stories. We also have a commissioned score from Indian composer Praveen D. Rao that is a lot of fun and very special. Because we have been looking at our dance histories we have each choreographed a classical variation. I have not even thought of dancing like this for many years, and yet there it was- like riding a bicycle! Sort of.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 10:16 am and is filed under Arts, Dance, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.