Premiere Date: 4/21/2011 PUNCH is Miro’s radical reimagining of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella. Miro and Parkins will experiment with everything from microphones, wawa pedals, commedia masks, and the company’s own dancers, to make a rowdy combination. From Italian street theater to the Ballets Russes, from The Punch and Judy Show to The Simpsons, the commedia characters have been a part of our culture – high and low. Miro is playing with those archetypes to turn Pulcinella into a bawdy and comic romp. Both Miro’s Artistic Director Amanda Miller and Parkins began as classical artists who are now bending the rules and lines of genre in their respective arts.
Premiere Date(s): 10/01/2010 – 10/02/2010 With Already Seen, Miro explores the “loop” on both the human and technological level. Taking as starting points the infinite circle of the film loop and the process of sound looping, Already Seen looks at the circles of repetition and the feelings of déjà vu that permeate our lives and relationships. The performers experience the same repeating moment and we, the viewer, are left to determine what has changed and what remains the same.
Premiere Date(s): March 2010 The Miro Dance Theatre Mash-Up Series is an experiment combining live music and dance- prepared fresh and served raw. Each experiment has Miro in the studio with a rock band and a composer, and on the fourth day we emerge to share the results for a brave audience who will experience a never to be repeated performance.You don’t want to miss these one-of-a-kind events.
Premiere Bharatnatyam, examine the questions that come with dance, identity, and moving beyond the classical form. Born a couple of days apart on opposite sides of the world, Amanda Miller (US) and Viji Rao (India) both began their classical training at the age of four. Now, thirty years later, following professional classical careers, they are both engaged in their own unique forms of contemporary dance. In How am I not Myself?, together with Tobin Rothlein’s video artistry, Miller and Rao dance their stories in an exciting new work of mythology, media, and madness.
Premiere Date(s): 09/10/2009 – 09/13/2009 “one day I simply disappeared.” A woman. A bicycle. Moving forwards. Backwards. Nowhere. Gone. Miro’s new gallery work is created in reponse to a challenge: to make and perform a mult-media piece using only sustainable energy…without plugging in to the power grid. With Generate. Degenerate. Miro has left computers and video projectors behind, and will be powering the show entirely though bike generated energy.
Premiere Date(s): 04/07/2009 Miro choreographer Amanda Miller and video artist Tobin Rothlein, the duo the New York Times says “do better than most at combining visuals and movement to make a third, poetically expressive form “, join forces again with Spooky Action. A magical story of two bodies falling eternally through a void, fatefully intertwined and inseparable, Spooky Action is an exploration through dance and video into the theory of quantum entanglement and the invisible connections between people. Inspired by an initial research trip to Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory, Miro worked with some of the world’s top physicist in creating a quantum physics love story of human proportions.
Premiere Date(s): 2008 Directed by Tobin Rothlein, Civilian / Warrior weaves the classic play Woyzeck, Indian Kali myth and interviews and imagery from recent war veterans to create a unique narrative on soldiers and citizens in our modern day culture of war. This unique combination of live dance and projected image combines elements of documentary film, multi-screen video installation and movement in hybrid between theatrical work and gallery installation. In creating Civilian / Warrior, Rothlein worked with a team of consultants and contributors, including hip-hop legend Rennie Harris, Seattle-based choreographer Maureen Whiting, former Army Sergeant John McCary, classical Indian dancer Viji Rao, co-director Amanda Miller and the Miro dancers.
Premiere Date(s): 05/02/2008 I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best. -Frida Kahlo Self-Portrait is a 30-minute solo performance originally commissioned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the 2008 Frida Kahlo exhibition. Combining live animation, video, still imagery, and technically demanding dance, Self Portrait becomes a living performance sculpture that the audience views from three sides. Miller and Rothlein join their choreographic and visual experience, using imagery and themes inspired by Kahlo’s paintings to create a performance experience resonating from a single dancing body that is both restrained and boundless. Inspired greatly by Kahlo’s diary, the human body becomes a canvas for self-expression by becoming a projection surface, catching the vivid, jewel-toned colors being hand-painted onto the performer via projection. Self-Portrait seeks to provide a new entry point for understanding the work of this monumental artist, while functioning as a universal testament to liberation through confinement and pain.
Premiere Date(s): 09/07/2007 50 drummers, 25 dancers, 2 video artists, and the science of particle acceleration – a collaborative experiment between Nadia Hironaka, Eugene Lew and Miro Dance Theatre (Amanda Miller and Tobin Rothlein). Principles of Uncertainty was created as a working model for large-scale multimedia events, utilizing scientific theories and structures to generate performative experiments from various creative disciplines. The work is adapted to each location, and incorporates dancers and musicians from the community.
Premiere Date(s): 05/04/2007 Four sax players, Four dancers, a sidewalk that turns into video, and an 80′s style boom box. Fueled by the energy, power, and sounds of the big city, Pitch Black is a kinetic look at the dance of city life. From traffic patterns to playground games the work looks at the search for human connection in the hustle and alienation of the urban landscape. In collaboration with the renowned PRISM saxophone quartet, Pitch Black is performed to the live music of celebrated Dutch composer JacobTV (Jacob ter Veldhuis). The music, created for saxophone quartet and an 80′s style boombox, incorporate samples ranging from jazz singer Billie Holiday, to religious fanatics in Times Square.
Throughout the year, the free monthly Open Studio Series, which launched in February 2007, has provided audiences with open access to the creative process and a chance to see and respond to new dance works in progress, as well as previous pieces from the Miro repertoire. Miro has just completed one year of this ongoing program, featuring guest artists from the region and around the world, at their Girard College studio in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia.
Premiere Date(s): 09/07/2006 – 09/16/2006 “There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.” - Franz Kafka A whirling array of narcoleptics, pyromaniacs, and paper dolls weave video art, ballet and modern dance into a magic-realism performance that explores the lies we tell each other, the lies we tell ourselves, and the lies we love to be told.
Premiere Date(s): 09/07/2005 The composers recurring vision of a carnival hurdy gurdy player sparks this unique and abstract interpretation of the life and music of Gustav Mahler. Using the letters and writings of Gustav and Alma Mahler, Miro’s premiere show submerges you in old dreams and new realities as time is turned on its head in the spaces where Mahler’s story intersects with our modern day. Featuring the music of Gustav Mahler as re-envisioned by Uri Caine and Pete Wyer.
