Incoming Northwest Heritage Centrum resident, Alice Gosti, invites Bebe Miller to have a conversation about dance, movement, and the context of their practices in the current moment. The two choreographers discover overlapping formative pedagogies and talk through the spatial experiences of zoom, intimacy and vulnerability in their bodies of work, the cultivation of collaboration and play, and the multiple influences of place, language, and connections with people. Listening to this conversation is a dance for the mind and offers new ways to think about how we move through the world.
Alice Gosti is an Italian-American choreographer, hybrid performance artist, curator and architect of experiences. Alongside her company members, she has been working in public spaces and exploring unconventional performances since 2013. Gosti’s work uses the world, landscapes, and pre-existing architectures as stages. Recent productions include How to become a partisan (Velocity Dance Center, 2015) and Material Deviance in Contemporary American Culture (On the Boards, 2018).
Gosti’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, commissions and residencies including being a recipient of the 2012 Vilcek Creative Promise in Dance Award, the 2012 ImPulsTanz danceWEB scholarship, a 2013 Bossak/Heilbron Award, part of the 2015 inaugural Intiman Theatre Emerging Artist Program as a Director, a 2015 Artist Trust GAP Grant, a 2015 and 2017 Seattle Office of Arts and Culture Award, a 2017 Artist Trust Fellowship, a 2016 NEFA National Dance Project Production and Touring Grant and, the inaugural Italian Council Grant from the Italian Government.
In 2013 she founded the Yellow Fish // Epic Durational Performance Festival, the world’s only festival dedicated to durational performance. Gosti is also a recipient of Centrum’s Northwest Heritage Residency program in 2020.
Bebe Miller first performed her work at NYC’s Dance Theater Workshop in 1978. Her choreography has been commissioned by Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Oregon Ballet Theater, Boston Ballet, Philadanco, the UK’s Phoenix Dance Company and a host of colleges and universities. Since its forming in 1985 Bebe Miller Company has performed nationally and in Great Britain, Europe, South America, Australia, Africa and the Caribbean. Over the last decade the Company has produced a variety of digital archive projects referencing the company’s creative practice. Her latest ebook, How Dancing Is Built: The Making of In A Rhythm, is available online. Bebe is one of the 2012 inaugural class of Doris Duke Artist Award recipients, as well as a 2010 United States Artists Ford Fellow. She has received four New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” awards, was a 2015 Movement Research Gala honoree and a 2020 Danspace Project Gala honoree, to be celebrated in 2021. Bebe was a Professor in The Ohio State University’s Department of Dance from 2000 through 2016, and has received honorary doctorates from Ursinus College and Franklin & Marshall College. She lives in Columbus, Ohio.