30
Apr/18

GIBNEY DANCE COMPANY: AMY MILLER & BRYAN ARIAS

30
Apr/18
Amy Miller

Amy Miller reenvisions Valence as part of split bill at Gibney with Bryan Arias (photo courtesy Gibney Dance)

Gibney 280 Broadway
Entrance at 53A Chambers St.
May 3-5, $15-$20
gibneydance.org

This week Gibney Dance Company is pairing new works by Senior Company Director Amy Miller and guest choreographer Bryan Arias on a split bill May 3-5. Dancer, choreographer, educator, and advocate Miller will present a revised version of her 2009 piece, Valence, a work for five dancers, mostly in duets, that compares the bonding of atoms to making personal connections, with a sonic soundscape by Oberlin Conservatory of Music professor and composer Peter Swendsen. Puerto Rican–born Arias, who has danced with Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater, and Kidd Pivot, among others, delves into society and human existence and time in the premiere of One Thousand Million Seconds, which totals thirty-three years. “Being able to be on a split bill with Bryan Arias and to be dancing in his work and revisioning mine are a great way of kind of switching the hat,” Miller says in a Gibney video about the performances. “When I go to a split bill show, I’m looking for the connection between the two pieces, but oftentimes I’ll just allow them to live beside each other, challenging dancers to switch gears, to be superhuman and then human, or to be connected and then to be isolated or to be incredibly lush and full and then have movement that’s very pedestrian or fragmented or subtle, and have all of those things be valuable. Maybe we help to dissolve some of the labels between things, the labels we have about dance, the labels we have about art and life.”