MAY 8-9, 2025
Our mission matters... to ignite the artistic freedom of performing artists of the Global Majority (85% of the global population) who dare to create new artistic works, new ideas, and a new world in which ALL people can flourish.
Due to persistent and longstanding inequitable systems and structures, artists and institutions of the Global Majority remain the underinvested communities of the 21st century and yet...
Harlem Stage is forged in a crucible of a creative fire whose flames and embers may waver, still — undeterred by overwhelming odds — we will continue to be a conduit for freedom, a lens to focus the issues of our time, and a light to illuminate any darkness.
Dr. Indira Etwaroo | CEO & Artistic Director | Harlem Stage
Our practice includes individual and collective choreographic contributions from the dance artists, whose creative insights and energies are an integral part of each work.
Rhythm Studies (1999)
• Choreographer and Originating Performer: Bebe Miller
• Performer: Darrell Jones
• Music: Harriet Tubman, Take Out (composed and performed by Brandon Ross, Melvin Gibbs and J.T. Lewis); Christian Marclay, Dance With Me, commissioned by Bebe Miller Company for Nothing Can Happen Only Once (1992).
• Text: Bebe Miller; additional text Darrell Jones
• Original Lighting Design: Michael Mazzola
This work was made during a time in my life when change was afoot and choices seemed immense. I had moved from New York to a professorship at The Ohio State University, anticipating time to unfurl my dance-making bit by bit; it took weeks to capture any “my” time at all. Counting on the probability that others have been there as well, Rhythm Studies felt like a way into—and through—the mayhem.
Indifferent Forest (premiere)
• Created and performed by: Bebe Miller, Angie Hauser, Darrell Jones, Stacy Matthew Spence
• Music: J.S. Bach, Partita #2 for Violin in D Minor, performed by Hilary Hahn; Michael Wall, Unisons and Tiny Voice; Milford Graves, Nothing
• Reference texts: Katie Mack, The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), Scribner, NY, 2020; Emanuele Coccia, The Life of Plants, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 2017; David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, Delacorte Press, NY, 2023; additional text by Bebe Miller
• Costumes: Mary McMullen
The world doesn’t wait for an explanation, and yet we persist. Our living together depends on the generative rub between us, in relation to the moment at hand; our dancing together depends on the same. We’re counting on the ground between us all to take us home.
The initial development of Indifferent Forest was made possible, in part, by a Danspace Project 2023–2024 commission and premiere for PLATFORM 2024, guest curated by Kyle Abraham. Thanks to Michelle Boulé for early development. Materials for this work were also developed during Bebe’s 2023 residency at MacDowell; many thanks for its community of fellow artists and staff. Thanks also to the Smith College Department of Dance for hosting multiple creative residencies. Rain (1989)
• Choreographer and Originating Performer: Bebe Miller
• Performer: Tamisha A. Guy
• Composer: Hearn Gadbois with Jay Bolotin, Robert Een and Rich Franko
• Additional Music: Heitor Villa Lobos, Bachianas Brasileiras #5, performed by Salli Terri (vocalist) and Laurindo Almeida (guitar)
• Original Lighting Design: Ken Tabachnik
• Visual Design: Bebe Miller
My inspiration for Rain came from vocalist Salli Terri singing Villa Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras #5. I thought it was the most beautiful song I’d ever heard. I also felt I didn’t have the temperament to approach it. I was too intense—struggle was what I took for granted. Deciding to dance to it meant looking for a way to be at peace.
Lighting Designer: Stan Pressner
Stage Manager: Tricia Toliver
Production Manager: Moqu Alqudah
Project Manager: Lila Hurwitz/Doolittle+Bird
Bebe Miller’s vision of dance and performance resides in her faith in the moving body as a record of thought, experience and sheer beauty. She has collaborated with artists, composers, writers, and designers, along with the dancers who share her studio practice and from whom she’s learned what dancing can reveal. A native New Yorker, she formed Bebe Miller Company in 1985. Since then, the Company has been commissioned by Brooklyn Academy of Music’s NEXT WAVE Festival, The Joyce Theater, Wexner Center for the Arts, On The Boards, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Theater Artaud, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, Dance Theater Workshop, New York Live Arts and Danspace Project, and has performed worldwide. The Company’s work encompasses choreography, writing and film, along with digital archive products that share their creative practice. Named a Master of African American Choreography by the Kennedy Center in 2005, Bebe is an inaugural Doris Duke Artist Award recipient, a Movement Research honoree, and a Danspace Project Gala honoree. She has received four New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards, the David R. White Award from New York Live Arts, and honorary doctorates from Ursinus College and Franklin & Marshall College. Bebe is a Distinguished Professor Emerita at Ohio State University, and lives on Vashon Island, WA. bebemillercompany.org
Tamisha A. Guy, a native of Trinidad and Tobago, studied at Ballet Tech under Eliot Feld, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, and SUNY Purchase. She joined the Martha Graham Dance Company 2013. Awards include the 2016 Princess Grace Award and 2022 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Dance. She was named one of Dance Magazine’s 2016 “Top 25 to Watch” and Dance Europe’s 2017 “Best Dancers of the Year.” Guy was a performer with A.I.M by Kyle Abraham from 2014 to 2025, serving as the Rehearsal Director for four of those years. She is currently a Dance Lecturer at Barnard College and the Founder of HUETAPE, a skin-toned kinesiology tape brand celebrating the unique needs of melanated individuals.
Angie Hauser is a “Bessie” Award-winning dancer whose work is grounded in improvisation and performance. She is a principal collaborator with Bebe Miller Company, contributing to the work as a performer, writer, and choreographic collaborator since 2000. Other dancemaking projects include long-time collaborations with dance artists Chris Aiken and Darrell Jones. She has taught dance, improvisation, and choreography throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and in
South America. She received her MFA in dance from The Ohio State University. She is currently a Professor at Smith College where she directs the Graduate Program in Dance.
Darrell Jones is a performer, educator, researcher, and choreographer. He has performed extensively across the United States and globally, in all kinds of venues, including Links Hall in Chicago, Danspace Project, Dance Box (Kobe, Japan), and the Venice Biennale. He maintains long-term collaborative relationships with Bebe Miller Company and Ralph Lemon. Additional foundational experiences have included working with Min Tanaka, Ronald K. Brown, Kokuma Dance Theatre (Birmingham, UK), and Urban Bush Women. Jones is a two-time “Bessie” Award recipient and has received grants and awards including the 3Arts Award, Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the MAP Fund. He is a tenured faculty member at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago where he teaches classes in physical practice, performance, and improvisational techniques. He holds an MFA in Dance from Florida State University.
Stacy Matthew Spence is a NYC-based dance artist. His choreography has been commissioned by The High Line with visual artist Ronny Quevedo, Danspace Project, The New School, Ishmael Houston-Jones’s Platform 2012: Parallels and Tisch School of the Arts. Stacy has performed in works by Margaret Peak as part of Jason Moran’s Whitney Biennial show BLEED, Deborah Hay as part of Ralph Lemon’s Some Sweet Day at MOMA, Joanna Kotze and others His work I am, here; Here with us; Where we find ourselves (2024) premiered at Danspace and was remounted for Danspace and New York Live Arts in 2025.
Stacy is currently working on a film version of I am, here in collaboration with videographer Iki Nakagawa. Stacy danced with The Trisha Brown Dance Company (1997–2006), was Education Director (2018–2021), and continues teaching and re-staging with TBDC. He has taught at Juilliard, Barnard, Tisch School of the Arts, Manhattan Marymount College, London Contemporary Dance School, Centre National de Danse Contemporaine, Movement Research. Stacy currently teaches at The New School.
Stan Pressner has created the lighting for dance, theatre, opera and music events on five continents. His work can be found in the repertoires of, among others: The New York City Ballet, Bayerische Staatsoper, The Lyon Opera Ballet, Geneva Opera Ballet, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane, Ralph Lemon and Company, Bayerische Staadtsballet, The Atlanta Ballet, The Boston Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Stephen Petronio and Dancers and The Netherlands Dance Theatre. His work includes: Jean Genet’s The Blacks for the Stockholm Staadsteatern and The Market Theatre of Johannesberg; Dances with Piano or… an evening of solos for Mikhael Baryshnikov; La Clemenza di Tito, The Abduction
from the Seraglio and The Rake’s Progress for the Munich Staadtsoper; scenery and lighting for The Logic of the Birds; scenery and lighting for John Jasperse’s See Through Knot for The White Oak Project; and Giant Empty for John Jasperse. Broadway designs include Twelfth Night and Richard III for the Globe Theatre. He has served as UCLA’s Visiting Professor of Dance Lighting from 1992–1994 and on faculty at both the Juilliard School and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He served as the resident lighting designer of the Lincoln Center Festival for its first 15 years. As a theatre consultant, he works with Theatre Projects Consultants. Mr. Pressner is the recipient of a 1988 New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”) for cumulative achievement, a 1997 Cable Ace Award for Bravo’s Inside the Actor’s Studio and a 1988, 1991 and 1994 American Theatre Wing Design Award nomination. He is thrilled to be working with Bebe again and otherwise is turning wooden bowls.
Tricia Toliver was the resident Lighting Designer/Technical Director for the Barnard College Dance Department from 2009–2022. She has worked for the Vail International Dance Festival since 2013 and has also stage managed for Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project. She has had the pleasure of working primarily in the dance world for such companies as the Trisha Brown Dance Company, Lucinda Childs, Lar Lubovitch, The Limon Dance Company, Doug Varone and Dancers, Donald Byrd/The Group, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Susan Marshall, David Dorfman Dance and Yin Yue Dance Company. Her other credits include production management for the National Ballet of Cuba, Netherlands Dance Theatre II, City Center Theater and NJPAC as well as stage managing Cirque Dreams, Jungle Fantasy on Broadway in 2008. She has a B.A. in dance from UCLA and an M.F.A. in dance from the University of Washington and danced with Donald Byrd/The Group from 1987–1991.
Moqu Alqudah is a freelance theater technician based in New York City, with experience in lighting, electrics, sound, scenic work, and production management. Over the past four seasons, Moqu has worked with the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, where he currently serves as the School Production Manager. He also regularly works at both union and non-union houses. Recently, he has collaborated with Ishmael Houston-Jones, New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players, David Dorfman Dance, and Peridance Contemporary Dance Company. Moqu holds a degree from Connecticut College, where he had the privilege of dancing with Bebe Miller during his senior year. Originally from Jordan, Moqu is dedicated to fostering international artistic collaboration and supporting innovative work that balances technical precision with creative expression.
Lila Hurwitz (Doolittle+Bird) supports creative people via project/tour management, grant-writing, communications and more. Current clients include dance artists Bebe Miller, Susan Marshall, Rosy Simas, Kathy Westwater and Feldenkrais® Trainer Jeff Haller. She is a co-founder of Motion State Arts, a presenting organization supporting innovative dance in Providence, RI. Lila co-founded Dance Art Group, which created and produced the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation and related events for 18 years. She was the graphic designer for Contact Quarterly magazine for 11 years, and served as Communications & Associate Director at Seattle’s Artist Trust for 10 years. She is also a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner. Lila feels extremely fortunate to support artists so that they can better focus on the art-making sides of their careers. doolittleandbird.com
Thanks/Acknowledgments
Thanks to Bebe Miller Company’s Board of Directors (Nena Couch, Linda Randall and Dana Whitco), Movement Research / Eden’s Expressway, David Gray, Jake Meginsky, Michael Wall, Mrs. Lois Graves, and our generous individual donors.