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A Moving Prayer

In 1982, Bebe Miller made her debut as a dancemaker when Ishmael Houston-Jones invited her into his Parallels series that featured Black choreographers who were experimenting in new forms. Now, forty three years later, Miller revisits “Vespers” as part of the Danspace Project’s 50th anniversary celebration. “Vespers, Reimagined (2025)” brings a younger generation of five dance artists and two musicians together with Miller as she returns to the iconic performance space of St. Mark’s Church to explore, respond, and expand the original work.

Performance

Bebe Miller: “Vespers, Reimagined (2025)”

Place

Danspace Project, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, New York, NY, March 29, 2025

Words

Karen Hildebrand

Bebe Miller's “Vespers, Reimagined.” Photograph by Rachel Keane

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For “Vespers, Reimagined,” a video of the original performance runs continuously, near the live performers. In a recent interview with Dance Magazine, Miller says she did not consider herself a technical dancer at the time. She had been studying with Nina Weiner (who danced with Twyla Tharp in the 1970s), and the video reveals a kind of movement fluidity that is a hallmark of Tharp’s work. Yet there is also evidence of a contemplative presence in the young Miller, the kind of inner focus and spatial attunement that gives rise to a compelling work of improvisation. The simple series of improvised and set phrases is mesmerizing to watch, with the crystalline a capella voice of Linda Gibbs sounding from behind.

K.J. Holmes, as vocalist, now performs Gibb’s original musical arrangement. We first hear her from a perch in the balcony, along with the slight echo of a second voice—perhaps an overlay of the original recording. In the church sanctuary, audience seated on opposite sides, the performers take their places in a horizontal line and together make their way from one end of the space to the other, the way farm workers might conduct a communal planting of a field, shoulder to shoulder. As the line progresses, the dancers remind me of colorful birds, pecking and picking their way in a flutter of individual shapes and gesture.

Bebe Miller's “Vespers, Reimagined.” Photograph by Rachel Keane

It's a treat to watch the group of five collaborators and improvisors riff alongside Miller as they flow from duos to trios and other clusters. These early to mid-career dancers bring impressive experience—their bios are filled with such credits as Urban Bush Women, David Dorfman, Stephen Petronio, Bill T. Jones, and Trisha Brown. Each brings a unique energy profile to this project: serpentine clarity in the case of Jasmine Hearn; Bria Bacon’s fierce commitment. Stacy Matthew Spence skitters between two clusters of dancers, herding them with a kind of bumping action. When Chloe London broadens the span of her arms in an arabesque, it’s as if she’s holding signal flags. When Miller takes a solo, it’s as if she is performing a duet with her younger self—the full impact of her inspirational career made visible.

The evening slides in and out of lecture dem mode as Miller chats with the audience, notecards in hand, telling us what she was thinking as she performed in 1982—the floor was surprisingly slippery, she was wearing jazz shoes. And there’s an overly literal moment when the five dancers cluster in one corner to watch young Bebe on video, and then take up her moves the way dancers pick up phrases in class. Miller approaches them with her laptop screen open so they can have a closer look. 

Percussionist Hearn Gadbois rubs the surface of a shallow drum as Spence enters, his right hand flapping like a bird, then both hands. Then his right foot joins in as he mimics the sound of the drum, angular, alert. A trio of Spence, Hearn, and Bacon move in unison. They walk, sit into a hip, break into a run, bending, turning, stumbling. When hopping on one leg, a dancer butts her head to Spence’s chest; he scoops her up with his jutted hip as she slides to the floor. Shayla Vie Jenkins follows this with a spectacular frenetic solo, spiraling and spinning around herself as the stage lighting goes red and the drum speeds up. 

Bebe Miller's “Vespers, Reimagined.” Photograph by Rachel Keane

Near the end, the performers again line up, and we hear a round of chiming church bells. The dancers (now including KJ Holmes) repeat the horizontal advancing line across the stage, and this time it seems quieter, the movement more refined. I imagine a kind of sprinkler system moving over a field, watering newly planted seeds.  

In the final moments, Miller calls in the spirits of her fellow 1982 Parallels cohort, saying their names and gesturing to the footprint of their work in different areas of the stage as she is remembering it in her mind’s eye: Blondell Cummings, Fred Holland, Rrata Christine Jones, Houston-Jones, Ralph Lemon, Harry Sheppard, Gus Solomons jr. Many times, the name she calls out is followed by, “who died in . . . ” Then she brings us back to 2025 with a reference to the world since the fall of the Twin Towers: “And all of us here have witnessed it all, at war again. This is now, the present. We are here.” 

Karen Hildebrand

Karen Hildebrand is former editorial director for Dance Magazine and served as editor in chief for Dance Teacher for a decade. An advocate for dance education, she was honored with the Dance Teacher Award in 2020. She follows in the tradition of dance writers who are also poets (Edwin Denby, Jack Anderson), with poetry published in many literary journals and in her book, Crossing Pleasure Avenue (Indolent Books). She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Originally from Colorado, she lives in Brooklyn.

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