This episode of Mid-Ground, is part 2, of a 2-part episode wherein Tara Aisha Willis hosts a conversation with Bebe Miller and Jennifer Harge.
This episode of Mid-Ground, is part 2, of a 2-part episode wherein Tara Aisha Willis hosts a conversation with Bebe Miller and Jennifer Harge.
INTRO: Welcome to How People Move People, a podcast about the impact that our words, art, stories, and lives have on each other. Each series journey unfolds in a sequence of six episodes. This series, titled “Mid Ground,” is hosted by dancer, curator, and scholar Dr. Tara Aisha Willis. “Mid Ground” brings pairs of dance and performance artists together in kinship around their roots and work in the Black Midwest.
TARA AISHA WILLIS: I just want to do a refresher of where we were at yesterday, just so we can remember. Bebe had said something beautiful about the connection of people from the Midwest who go on to be prolific artists elsewhere. Maybe their relationship with their home is embodied in a way, in the writing (Harge: Hmm), in the work that they do, rather than on the surface right? Or named. And then Jennifer said something beautiful about feeling less externally motivated and not so invested in what folks from the coast think, or what New York thinks, and sort of artistically, something about the Midwest and Detroit has made you sort of orient towards the region and the place and the people around you, which might be out of necessity, but also is kind of an effect of being here. And then Bebe said something beautiful about the artists, the work of artists is often to kind of step outside of the work and look at it and think it through and kind of understand it from an external place. So what do we do with that, you know, in relation to this, like grounding down, that might be a side effect of the Midwest. And so I guess maybe with those thoughts in mind as statements, not questions. I'd love to hear, you know, we had been talking about Toni Morrison and her and specifically, like her artistic work and her way of writing narrative and character. But I know both of you have ways of thinking about story in past work, in relationships with narrative even in work that's very abstract otherwise. So I'm curious for you all to think alongside all of those notes and maybe talk about a previous project where you have dealt with story, even memory, right? As artists, how do you think of that kind of stepping outside or being inside of the story, also in relationship to work you might have done in the past?
JENNIFER HARGE: The thing on my mind immediately is the most recent project I did called FLY | DROWN, which is all about story. It's constructed as fables, the project as a whole, and memory, it's like, and I think so much of it is coming from personal memory, collective memory, and then shared as stories. And I think for me, so much of going back to the conversation yesterday in thinking about, like my, how I situate myself in a work and like I'm, I'm trying to be on the inside, and I'm trying to give the interior world a grammar, and then, like, see how it can reverberate out. I think prior to FLY | DROWN, I think I was kind of stepping outside and maybe commenting on something. But so much of what's happening now, I think, from yesterday too, thinking about living and being in presence, it is very much happening from an interior place, and then trying to give it gesture or give it sound or like let it be beyond my own body. That's where I'm at with that question right now.
BEBE MILLER: (Clears throat) It's a wonderful question, and it gives me coming at it and almost as a question (laughs), different than like, you know, how should I think of story in my, in my own work? You know, it's like, like, Well, how do I? It's asking myself. And I'm referring back in my mind to several maybe crossroads in my work, and including, like even 30 years ago, where I first stepped out of my work on a, on a, for, for most of the pieces that we were making. And it happened to be about memory, memory. And not so much about memories, but like the process of memory, the storm of memory, the interruption, the fragments that bloom and then disappear and are populated and never resolve. And so thinking of that in a really, in an abstract way. And then fast forward. Forward another 10 years, or go backwards another 20 years, and I have a, an incident where I'm in, I'm in the studio with, with Talvin Wilkes, our dramaturg, and Angie and Darrell. And Angie's looking out the window, and we can't see what she's seeing, but we see the effect of what she's seeing. So we started calling that thing a story nest, that, that whatever her involvement in her own life perspective (Willis: Hmm), was what we were we were trying to capture. So, not so much capturing the story itself (Willis: Hmm), but it's sense that for the people involved, they have a history and a future that we are in the middle of as we make whatever work we're making. And so those are really kind of concrete story, storied incidents, in how, in how I think about making dance. And, and, and Tara, what you're saying about the grammar, which I also think of as the syntax of meaning, meaningfulness. You know, how you put these chunks of event and, and how we absorb the impact, or how we, you know, push back on whatever else, whatever it might be. So I feel like I'm, I'm mining something about the individuals in the room, whether they're on stage or, well, yeah, say, say, even on, on a performer basis, whether I'm involved or not, but knowing that they're carrying a reflection of whatever it is that's happening based on their own lives. And so we are, we are generating life, lifeness (laughs) (Willis: Hmm), as we're making and I'm really interested in that less, less so in the theme of what it is a story might be telling. But almost, you know, when you turn the dial on a radio and something catches you, and then you stay with it for a bit, and then it doesn't resolve. So which kind of is like how life happens, it seems to me. So I realized that for better or worse, I'm less of a through line of a story or an image or a theme, but more about the ricochet of effect and meaning and, and consideration, which always…I love that that that sense that when you consider something, you step back a little bit (Willis: Hmm), and you, and you ponder, and then you kind of come forward. So just the kind of the dynamics of our own perception feel very enticing and inviting. And I say for better or worse, because, you know, there are people who go to a theater event and it's like, okay, what's, you know, take me from beginning to the end. And I don't know what that exactly is going to mean. I mean, we have a timeline, but, and we shape it, but, but there is, there is the liveliness in the middle (Willis: Hmm) that even inside a really concrete structure that is still in play. And so something about diving into the story-ness of that we all carry (Willis: Hmm), and that those things are in relationship with each other for a period of time that we get to shape.
TARA AISHA WILLIS: Yeah, that's beautiful. I…
BEBE MILLER: I love talking about dance. I just do (Everyone laughs). It's just, it's so great. Hmm.
TARA AISHA WILLIS: Yeah, it is, it really is great (laughs). And it's like the best, I mean, it's, I'm biased. It's my favorite lens through which to think about literally everything else outside of dance, outside, in quotes of dance (Miller: Mm-hmm). I wonder if the stepping outside that is actually getting deeper into it that you just described is also a way to think about the question of documenting and archiving your work, alongside being in the making of the work, you know, and being, being an active artist you know, which both of you are, while also thinking about how the work is saved or preserved or held in some other ways.
JENNIFER HARGE: I'm thinking about, so it's been a few years since I worked with an ensemble. So, like, when so, like, the literal kind of stepping outside that has to happen in a directorial role hasn't really been happening for me. But I'm reminded of that inside and outside, happening simultaneously when, when working with an ensemble. And I mentioned before us only being able to rehearse on Sundays for a long time, and so that documentation in observing it and being with it, and like trying to move it, even though you couldn't do that just with the video itself. But I try to make new choices while, while being with it. I think it's my work for a long time when I wasn't able to be with the dancers. And then now I don't go back and watch my own moving self from rehearsals, like I just, I can't face it, or something I don't know. And so I'm left with, like, a collection of different kinds of residue, like, the scores are what we, then I can come to of like, what has happened, or what has been documented, what is what has been moving in that space. And those feel like the things to pass on, versus this is what we did, but it feels more productive to say this is how we did it. And I'm curious to know how you might answer the same questions. And, and so much too of what I've been collecting and hearing and witnessing sure has been coming through as ancestral assignments, spiritual assignments in, and the works have been vessels for those, that information to be coming through. And so with that, then I really feel a responsibility to share it out, because I don't feel necessarily was like it was mine, and now you should understand it as mine. But I'm curious, of like, what does it mean to, like, a lot of elder knowledge, I think, too, has been embedded in a lot of the works I've been making in the last five years or so, maybe 10 years. And so like, what does it mean to distribute this information that like someone told me, someone taught me? And so what is it to like? These are the maps that are being made right now. So how can I give someone else the map and then you can orient yourself in it in ways that make sense for you, but you don't have to follow the path that I did in the making.
TARA AISHA WILLIS: Jennifer, just for some concreteness amidst that you've had a specific project and actually some specific funding to think about (Harge: Mm-hmm) this. Can you just name what that all is?
JENNIFER HARGE: Yeah. Sure. Sure. So this more formal archiving project happened through Dance USA’s Archiving and Preservation fellowship, and which happened this summer 2023. And the project itself, we sort of have a collection of butcher papers that usually I talk about our housing all these citations and scores, and when I go to different studios as I mentioned before. And so this fellowship period, we use the time to sit with one collection of papers. And so this last collection that come from my time at Yaddo. And so the archivist fellow, Layla Franklin cataloged the papers in terms of like, themes that were happening along, within the collection. And all those themes have led they, like, kind of look back into my last decade of making in Detroit. And so we found, like, oh, most of the papers include some kind of declaration. All of them talk about some kind of, like spatial organization. All of them have some kind of thing about, like a prayer or a movement score. So, like, all these become cataloged, and then from that, another map was made, which feels like that is the offering that is a way to enter the archive, through these prompts, more or less, which I think another version, like the dances that were made within those, within these thematic movements, will be shared, but they feel secondary to the actual prompts and maps that folks can interact with.
BEBE MILLER: I'm loving the idea of, of, of the map. I'm loving the map. And also and, and that it's a thing (laughs) that you could hold (Willis: Hmm). That it's a piece of butcher paper that, that doesn't change unless you change it. And sort of the, you know, the, the keeping of that, of that information, because so much of what we do is quote, unquote, ephemeral, even though we live with the effect of it forever (Willis: Hmm). I mean, it just doesn't leave ourselves. And, oh, there's, there's, I guess it was about 10, 10, years ago, or a little bit more, we were working on a piece, and Talvin mentioned that. And, oh, and some, one of our references was dark matter. And Talvin said, you know, when people Google “dark matter,” we should show up so that people know that dance, people, you know (Willis: Hmm), have other interests than how we're going to move our body. And that, that sense of like, yeah, these are, are concrete ideas or, or thematics or areas of investigation that we have passed through, and they are lodged in the piece in some way, but, but audiences don't see them (Willis: Hmm). And we know that there has been in much of our, the history of this forum that the documentation of the event, the product has been primary, and anyway, so somehow, back at that moment of like Dark Matter, of trying to, to put emphasis on, how do we archive our creative practice, from piece to piece, but also the arc of, of, of development, of ways of moving, ways of thinking about moving, who is in the room and how that affects us. So, so, I'm really interested in this archival process, and the last several performance pieces that we've actually done have been infused with that (Willis: Hmm). One piece, A History from 2012 was very much about Angie and Darrell as a duet, looking back at a piece that they had done, and all the things about and how it kept on referring forward and forward and coming back and, and, and living again. And then evolving. So, so something about the, the reality of our form, that these are, we are fleshy, thinking, remembering (laughs) beings. And that that is the archive. And rather than just thinking of, oh yes, it's all just an embodied experience, I really am enjoying the effort of, of tracking, of writing, of cataloging, and I feel really fortunate that, through a really lucky event series, that many of our written archives are kept at Ohio State University Libraries. And so I was just there a month ago, just trying to just track some data about, about our work. But coming back on ways of thinking, and that there is a progression that can be followed, that I could follow (Willis: Hmm), or that some other interested person could follow. When I say follow, I don't mean it's a straight line, but it is a progression in time of perceptions. So I feel at this point in my, in my life, and my creative life, by life, their arc is not feels a little, I don't like the shape of that, because there's an end, goes down at the end (laughs). But just there is a, there is a path going from one end to end, continuing, and so the passing through the context of several decades of what's happening in the world and how that is also part of our creative practice. What do we happen to be talking about coming off the subway into the, into the studio (Willis: Mm-hmm), and like, did you see this? And so on and so that, so forth. But so the, there's a trying to take the opportunity to actually research the, the data of, of dailyness (Willis: Mm-hmm) as well as the depth of event over time, and know that that has an effect on the body, know that it has an effect on our art form, that it has an effect in and that we are affected by the wider world (Willis: Hmm). So and I think that's important for, for us as artists, and for people thinking of, of dance and choreographers and dance artists, performers, all the people involved, that we are this progression of another contextual view of our sociopolitical, cultural moment (Willis: Hmm). So and it comes down to the individual. It comes down to the individual and what we carry, but we are part of that. So, yeah, I feel really interested in, in, in right now I'm in the writing retreat. I was at McDowell, and I want to go to Yaddo too (Harge and Willis laugh). But it was just a time to, to, to write and to really kind of mine, what, what happened? What is happening? (Willis: Hmm). Thank goodness for video. One short story that I found a video from, oh, about 25 years ago or so, and working on a soloist and, and they are, you know, they are a beautiful dancer, doing stuff. And then I turn I say, like, okay, now this time, let's and then I turn off the video. So I don't know what I've told her to do, because at that time, we weren't wasting video on just talking (Harge laughs?). So all that capture of that would have been possible, of like, where, what are we actually thinking of. Anyway, it's, it's funny (Willis: Yeah) to think about, but it was a lost moment.
TARA AISHA WILLIS: Yeah.
(Miller laughs)
JENNIFER HARGE: I'm thinking about how personal it all is (Miller: Hmm), and especially like the effects of the daily. So inside of these butcher papers, I also, I don't know how many of these I have now, I can show you, this really, like one-inch thick notebooks that they're filled with notes alongside the processes. But like, it's not just choreographic notes. Like I'm just using them all the time, so the daily is happening within and on top of. And they, they also give a lot of insight into the structures of making dances, but it's also my business, and so I never know (laughs), like, which parts are useful (Willis: Yeah) to offer and then which parts, like, what is just that's just gonna have to be mine. But also, like…
TARA AISHA WILLIS: So I’m curious to hear what you…
JENNIFER HARGE: …No. Go ahead.
TARA AISHA WILLIS: …What do want to allow people to see…(laughs)
JENNIFER HARGE: Yeah, you know, yeah. Like what needs to be redacted? Like, what is just the agency too, I think then, of presenting an archive.
TARA AISHA WILLIS: And the fact that the notebooks are holding all of it, I think, is interesting in and of itself, like that for you, these are not separate notebooks (Harge: Mm-hmm). Like, I used to keep separate notebooks for, like, notes for my job and notes for myself, and you know what I mean? And then suddenly I'd be going to a lecture, and I'd be like, which notebook does it go in? (Harge laughs and says: Exactly) And now I'm carrying three notebooks (Harge laughs). Like, why? You know? So, yeah, I'm, I know you, yeah, continue your thought, Jennifer (laughs).
JENNIFER HARGE: No, I'm just, no, I don't know. I'm just thinking a lot about agency in being alive while archiving in the power of that, but also the of a shyness at the same time. And so I'm just curious, Bebe, as you've been archiving your own work, so like, how do you make choices around what is to share, and then what is, what is yours?
BEBE MILLER: Oh.
TARA AISHA WILLIS: And let me add to that. Bebe, if you could name concretely, like some, because you have actually several projects that I would say are kind of archiving. I mean, besides the OSU, like Library Archives, there's the Vault project. There's also A History, which was a piece which also looked back on work. And then there's restaging Rain, which is a solo, an earlier solo, you know. So there's all these different ways that archiving is happening for you right now. And even our project together, (Miller: It’s really) Relations, is also an archive in its own way (Harge: Hmm). So yeah…
BEBE MILLER: It, it.Oh, so true, so true. And thank you for that. Just the poke and A History from 2012 is what I was talking about when we're working with Talvin, Talvin and Angie's looking out the window and, and it's all like, oh, story-ness was beginning. And so somehow the, the birth of story-ness inside of the process of A History, which was at the time, also looking back on our prior processes from, oh, yeah, 10 years before that. So the, the looping is there. I think the Vault project started in 2017 and it was not a performative project at all, but a gathering of dance artists, researchers, presenters, small groups, no, really, never more than like, 15 people at a time in, in various locations, New York, Chicago, Columbus, Jacob's Pillow, and Seattle. And just spending some time, often, like a couple of days, of just broaching this idea of, of archive, that vault, the vault of not just to hold and to keep back to your question of what is yours. But also maybe the vault to jump outward, away from our process and share that, so some, and I love just the two dynamics of that word. So the Vault project that contains that process, vault-project.org that can be found. And thank goodness for the internet again. We also have two different e-books, one called Dance Fort it that was about the process of making A History. So it's not, it's meant not to represent the piece, but just kind of a catalog of the kinds of things that went into the making of that. And, and I love that it contains like the voice of all of, all of the collaborators involved in that process, as well as mine. We did a piece In a Rhythm in 2017, and which is great, great piece. Yeah, a whole different collection of people, but it was my first opportunity to just do a kind of a from a choreographic feedback of like, what was the chronology of that process? What are the things that I encountered with the people in the room? But I often was the only kind of consistent person with different groups. And so a tracking of the kinds of things that are gathered depending on who's in the room. That's an e-book called How Dancing is Built. And these can all be found online. And I think, yes, Tara the, the Relations project, which I always call reunion (everyone laughs) as well as relations, because it was, it was me, Ishmael Houston-Jones and Ralph Lemon, curated, thank you, by Tara and invited to Chicago (Harge: I was there), for the performance. And it was. It was great…
TARA AISHA WILLIS: Oh yeah, you were, Jennifer. You came into town (Harge laughs). Yes, yeah. Because we had other stuff happening. Yeah. Yeah.
BEBE MILLER: Oh, did I, did we meet them? Maybe we did…
JENNIFER HARGE: No, no, we didn't. No. But I was there.
BEBE MILLER: Oh, oooh. Okay, missed opportunity. But just so funny, just having that as a, as a, as a point to aim toward, for the three of us, meant that we spent time in a room talking and rolling around. And then, like, well, put on some music, oh, all right. And then like, talk again, and just the shift of what a process building could feel like (Harge: Hmm). And that, you know, we've known each other since the 19 at least, and so early 80s and so just that, that that chance to check in on these three different timelines that were intertwined for so long. And yeah, and it was our first and only time that the three of us have been on stage. So I feel really, really good about at this point in my in my choreographic life, that there are these opportunities to look into, not only look back, but look into, further into the processes that were actually happening that maybe I didn't have the mental space for or that I didn't have the, the objectivity to, to kind of to place them in the sequence of time (Harge: Hmm). So yeah…
TARA AISHA WILLIS: Whose work do you feel that you've been loved by? (Harge: Hmm) And who are you loving when you make work? (Miller: Ooh) (Harge laughs) And work, work could be artistic work, but it could also be, I don't know, your mom, you know? I mean, it could be (Harge: Yeah), it could be like anyone's life work, I think is, is open here (Harge: You got me crying on this). And this is our last question on.
JENNIFER HARGE: Also, I'm a crier, so if it happens, we all know (everyone laughs). Bebe, do you want to go first?
BEBE MILLER: No (Harge: Okay). You go first.
JENNIFER HARGE: Okay. I love this question, and I, oof, so I am in a room right now surrounded by many pictures of many ancestors, and I feel that I have received from them in a really particular way, especially, and not only in Detroit, when I talk a lot about, like, not really having the infrastructure to support the works I was trying to make. But long before then, and being in really particular, really modern, postmodern dance worlds, where I am, like, committed to making Black work, but I am learning all things Judson right in my body. And so I'm just like, I'm at a, I don't know what's happening (laughs) in my body, but I will, I will make sense of this. And so I do think Black people have always been with me as I pushed through these spaces, trying to dance into myself. And so in return, I think always loving Black people as I'm making. I'm always trying to like be in that love practice with the things I have learned from Black people always. And I think about that really personally with my family. I think about, I told someone this recently, but when I first started being able to kind of understand what else was in my body besides the trainings I had been receiving as a, as a dancer, seeing my hands, seeing my grandmother's hands and our feet, I'm like, they are identical. And I was like, well, how is that? How does that show up in how I move? And then, and that just like, reoriented my whole kind of physical practice. Not that it was nothing really changed, but I just got more specific in, in how I was moving and whose movement was in my body, not through a training, but through an inheritance. And something I'm always I'm always moving with that, and I'm always wanting to be explicit in in that when I'm, when I'm making. And then also I have to shout out, Bebe Miller. I think about this all the time. When I was making dances, I started crying again. And you know, I would show up with, like, in super Black spaces too. And they'd be like, you don't do the thing how we do. And I'm like, yeah, I'm like, a postmodern girl, and they like, you know who you remind me of? And I'll be like, I don't know. Please tell me someone, like I'm searching for anything (laughs). Like, here I am in Saginaw, Michigan, without a lot of references, you know. And like, you remind meofa Bebe Miller, and I'd be like, great (Miller and Harge laugh). I'm blessed to know there is a path, there is a blueprint for this way of working. And I've been told that like four or five times since I was like 17 years old. And yeah, so I think about Black people, think about Black women in particular, that like it is an exchange of receiving, and then me wanting to honor and like, yeah, transmit that back out and yeah. And like, in being in that constantly, like, I'm most fulfilled when I'm in that practice. Face is wet child.
BEBE MILLER: Oh man (Harge laughs), let me, let me help. Let me help (Harge: Aww. Thank you. Thank you). Oh, I just, I'm holding you (Harge: Oh, thank you). I’m just holding you, holding you both (Harge: Mmm). Oh, gosh.
TARA AISHA WILLIS: My heart. I’m so glad that you could be on this call together (laughs).
BEBE MILLER: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
TARA AISHA WILLIS: And that, you know you, you didn't meet during Relations in 2018 (Harge: Yeah). But here it is, you know (Harge: Yeah), it's happening.
BEBE MILLER: And so we have to find a time when we will actually be in hand’s reach (Harge: Yes), you know (Harge: Yes). I'm, I'm so moved. Thank you for everything you just said (Harge: Hmm). And also I think, and okay, just, and this is I grew up in the 50s, and my mother took us to Henry Street, and I entered in a world of, of wonder and dance like the smoke, a cloud, a piece of paper on the sidewalk, crumble it that's, you know, do that, be an owl? It was magical. My brother, my sister and I, and maybe one or one or two others, were the only Black folks, Black children in the room. It didn't matter to me, because I was there with wonder and my mom. And so I thank her for that and for, turns out that my first dance teacher also had that camp in Maine that I, my mother was a nurse at, and we all went. So I got, I got my land (Willis: Mm-hmm), my sense of land from that, also not so many Black folks. So I think it's taken a long time to, to figure out. Like, you know all, there was a, there was a time early in the work when I would get the report back of like, well, you tell us the Black stories. And I'm like, but this is a, it's, it is. It has other people in it as well, but it is a Black story (Willis: Mm-hmm). So just kind of coming through the time of, of what we felt, how our stories were, were received, not even told, not even so much about, you know, the allowance of telling, but just the arrangements of presenters and reviewers and communities and, and difficult contextual political times as we're forging our making. But there's also, though, the always the what is that? The question of like, huh, if you move this way, what is why is my back that way? And why is your back in another way? Let's try that on. So the curiosity of, of what was, both how I grew up, but also what else was around me that was unfamiliar, was a drive. And I remember my mother would say, like, you know you're here to follow your interest. And I so, so didn't realize how deep a, a statement that was about I'm the only one who can see how I see. We are the only ones who see how we see. So that story is worth telling. And I think over time, the through, and it's all context of everything else that is happening, the context of how maybe our cultures have learned to hear or not. But how we persist or not, I feel very I go back to in my, in my mind, to my, my Red Hook projects body, age twelve or age seven, of, of just, you know what you held as secret, what you didn't share out in school, and that that be that has a kinetic spirit to it. So I try that on. I go back to Blondell Cummings, and she would talk about how she would follow people down the street and just kind of walk like them. And she said I had no business doing that (laughs). That could be dangerous, but she tried it on (Harge laughs). And so just some, some permission to be curious, I think was what I inherited, and I'm grateful for. And hopefully I have the, not the physical strength, but just the kind of like embodied strength to pursue that, regardless of its how it's, how it's manifest in, in work. As for who, I think that's a lot of, who I've I'm dancing, who I am dancing for and with. But in terms of who else might be receiving this, I don't know. I thank you, Jennifer, that you heard (laughs) (Harge: Mm-hmm). But, but in a way, our job is to deliver it as clearly as we can from our moment in time. Uh. And well, one, trust that it's being heard, but then trust that it's being delivered (Harge: Mm-hmm). Trust that you're being true (Harge: Mm-hmm) to yourself, and then that will carry form forward.
OUTRO: How People Move People is brought to you by the National Center of Choreography at the University of Akron, or NCC Akron. This podcast is produced by Jennifer Edwards, James Sleeman is our editor, theme music by Ellis Rovin, sound design by Damon Locks, transcription by Arushi Singh, cover art by Micah Krauss. I'm DeMarcus Akeem Suggs, Director of Development at Mid-America Arts Alliance, Founder and Framework Culturist at kuumbuntu, LLC, and an NCCAkron board member. Special thanks to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for their continued support of NCCAkron programming like this. To learn more about NCCAkron, please visit us online at nccakron.org and follow us on Instagram or Facebook at NCCAkron. We hope you enjoyed this episode and encourage you to subscribe on your favorite podcast streaming platform by searching for How People Move People.