Celebrating Choreographer Bebe Miller on Her 70th Birthday

The Brooklyn native got her start dancing in classes with Murray Louis, noting in the December 1989 issue of Dance Magazine, “I learned improvisation and composition before I knew how to plié.” Recalling a couple of months of ballet classes at age 13, she added, “All those little bunheads and me from the projects. I was intimidated, so I stopped. Thank God I couldn’t do a decent plié, so I could make up one…”

In 1975, Miller earned an MA in dance from Ohio State University (where she is now professor emerita after being on faculty from 2000–16). After a few years of bringing her work to stages like Dance Theater Workshop, she formally founded Bebe Miller Company in 1985.

Her dances are postmodern in vocabulary but concerned, always, with humanity and how people relate to one another. Her most recent solo, debuted in March, is called What I Learned From My Friends.