Zoe Scofield and Bebe Miller
(Chumash, Tongva, and Fernandeno Tataviam (Los Angeles, CA); Duwanish, Suquamish, Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla (Seattle, WA) / Vashon Island, WA)
From the Archive: an artist talk + screening with Zoe Scofield and Bebe Miller
Access: CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) captioning will be provided at this event.
DESCRIPTION
“This series is born from my love of art, artists, process, being in a theater with other people, and movie theaters. Rather than shut down during this unknown, turbulent, scary time, this is our offering, deepening relationships between artists and their community by presenting performances that aren’t touring or have been lost.“ —Zoe Scofield
“I think that part of the reason I choreograph has to do with revisiting memory in some weird, made-up way. I am taken away by the chance to crystallize fleeting encounters I may have seen or remembered, stopping time and action long enough to read them from the inside—from the flesh, from a distance. I fact-check my attention, choreographically: What’s the rhythm? Where’s the focus? What’s the next dream move? I don’t carry the catalog of my life in my head, not all of it anyway. But I do collect kinds of time, kinds of impulses and resolutions that I see around me. My reasons for dancing—for dancemaking—might sit alongside the reasons one watches these dances, but then how would I know that? We come together empty-handed, hearts and minds at the ready.” —Bebe Miller
The artist talks are like going to a movie, being in the audience of a dance performance, and grabbing a drink with the artist all in one. It is a chance to learn more about how an artist thinks and see works that aren’t available to experience otherwise in the company of others. It is a gathering in a community more reflective of the experience of a live performance than watching dance footage on a phone or computer alone.
The series creates opportunities for artists to show their work—and for audiences to experience it—using resources that already exist: high-quality performance footage and the artists themselves.
Our intention is for these talks to foster a sense of relationship between the viewers and the artist, allowing viewers to see a side of the artist they haven’t yet seen.
This series is born from my love of art, artists, process, being in a theater with other people, and movie theaters. Rather than shut down during this unknown, turbulent, scary time, this is my offering: deepening relationships between artists and their community by presenting performances that aren’t touring or have been lost. The artist talks will create containers for the magic of experiencing performance with others while generating income for artists through work they have already made. They will use existing resources with the specific intention of not asking artists to compromise in an extremely compromising time.
As it grows, these talks will be offered around the country as a portable way to present work and artists that haven’t been seen in an area, as well as bring artists to areas that may not have the resources to present a live performance of their work. They are also opportunities to introduce regional artists who haven't toured to other cities to a new place.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Bebe Miller, a native New Yorker, formed Bebe Miller Company (BMC) in 1985 to pursue her interest in finding a physical language for the human condition. BMC has been presented by such venues as 651 ARTS, BAM Next Wave, Dance TheaterWorks, Jacob’s Pillow, Joyce Theater, Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts, REDCAT, and Wexner Center for the Arts. Named a Master of African American Choreography by the Kennedy Center in 2005, Bebe is in the 2012 inaugural class of Doris Duke Artist Awardees and has been honored by Movement Research, Danspace Project, and New York Live Arts. A Distinguished Professor Emerita in The Ohio State University’s Department of Dance, she currently lives in a forest on Vashon Island, WA.
https://bebemillercompany.org/ @bebemillerco
Zoe Scofield (she/her) is a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow and a dance and visual artist based in Seattle, WA, and Los Angeles, CA. Zoe is the co-artistic director and founder with Juniper Shuey of zoe | juniper, a dance and visual art company since 2005. Her work has been commissioned and presented by Jacob’s Pillow, New York Live Arts, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, On the Boards, RedCat, MASS MoCA, The Frye Art Museum, The Joyce Theater, PS 122, Carolina Performing Arts, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Zoe works in performance, video installation, photography, opera, and film. She has received funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Princess Grace Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the National Performance Network, and more. Zoe’s current piece, Tell the truth and shame the devil, is a live dance and music collaboration with Xiu Xiu. Zoe has an MFA in Dance from the University of the Arts.
https://zoejuniper.org/ @zoejuniper_company
SUPPORT
This work is supported in part by 4Culture.