Usually I meet choreographers before I interview them, or at least I have seen a concert or two of theirs. But having heard plenty of positive buzz and watched some captivating clips on YouTube, I was sufficiently intrigued about Andrea Miller to set up a Skype conversation with the New York-based choreographer this summer.
Unlike most of the artists I’ve interviewed in the last two years, Andrea isn’t Israeli. However, she’s no stranger to the Israeli contemporary dance scene. Prior to taking Manhattan by storm with her three-year-old company, Gallim Dance, Andrea lit up the stage as a member of the Batsheva Ensemble. I couldn’t help but wonder if and how her fresh aesthetic had been affected by her time here in Israel.
Video: A trailer for Gallim Dance in Andrea Miller’s Blush, which will be performed at Jacob’s Pillow from July 8-12.
What’s a New York-based dance company doing with a name like Gallim, which means “waves” in Hebrew?
Gallim Dance wasn’t founded by an Israeli, but its director and choreographer – Andrea Miller – was once at the center of Israeli contemporary dance as a member of Ohad Naharin’s Batsheva Ensemble. Now Miller is generating buzz of her own with Gallim, which has attracted the attention of presenters, critics, and audiences since its inception in 2006.
It was Miller’s I Can See Myself in Your Pupil which first caught the eye of Ella Baff, the director of the famed Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts. Baff invited Gallim Dance to perform the work at the festival’s Inside/Out outdoors stage last summer, and she called the concert “a big hit.” “People really, really loved it,” she told me in a phone interview. “It was absolutely one of the most popular things that we presented on Inside/Out last season.”
Gallim Dance is poised to be another hit at the Pillow this year. From July 8-12, Gallim Dance will perform Miller’s latest work, Blush, in the Doris Duke Theatre.
