The Joyce Theater, New York, NY.
November 11, 2026.
To understand what drives Andrea Miller, director and choreographer of GALLIM, a note on her website will provide insight: “I am curious to understand the capacity of the body, its anatomy, its power, and its instinct to connect with the space and events around us. In my work, I look for texture, a quality of energy, or a psychological pitch that surfaces in the doing of things.”
Both the power of the body and the exploration of energy are hallmarks of Miller’s choreography. The GALLIM company are remarkable performers who embodied the range of movement— from the smaller gestures, the signature wide-legged stance with the tapping of toes, sinewy upper body articulations, and contortion-like shapes, as they bloom into bigger movements— with precision and immense athleticism.
The first piece on the program, State (2018), choreographed by Miller with artists of GALLIM and Kyle Abraham Dance Vanguard, featured Payton Johnson (a wonderful guest performer with GALLIM), Antonia Luz and Vivian Pakkanen. The dance began in shadows with the three dancers hunched over, slightly swaying and tapping their toes in a march as they slowly moved forward in time to the sparse rhythms of Reginald “Rivka” Watkins’ score. Lighting (Nicole Pearce) cast the dancers as large shadows on the back wall, adding an additional dimension to the piece. The piece starts small but expands and then contracts again.
Dreams, choreographed by Miller in collaboration with GALLIM, was a solo performed on this evening’s program by India Hobbs. Set to the song of the same name by The Cranberries, it was both quirky and cute. Great Big Bellow, choreographed by Sean Howe, GALLIM’s rehearsal director, and performed by the company, was a concept piece. Described as “the roar of a child grappling with reality, and the celebration of life in all its beauty, absurdity, and adversity,” the piece began with eight dancers in greenish bodysuits (costumes by Mikaela Kelly), standing on their heads, their feet swaying like seaweed in a pond. Soon, they descended from the headstands and clustered together, like a horde of bugs having an awakening.
Howe has adopted Miller’s signature wide-legged second position plié, from which a wide range of drapey backbends and small moves occurred. Dancers were often rooted in place and performed gestural movements such as pointing and slapping. There were a couple of lovely moments. In one section, the dancers created a bridge in backbends, and one dancer slipped under them and lifted herself up into a backbend underneath a taller dancer. In another moment, two dancers clasped hands, and another draped herself over as they lifted her up to float for a moment. The piece featured a voiceover by a child whose pensive musings continued throughout the piece but weighed it down rather than lifted it up.
Closing the program was Year (2020), a premiere by Miller in collaboration with the artists of GALLIM and Kyle Abraham Dance Vanguard. The soundtrack (Frédéric Despierre), lighting (Dan Scully), and costumes (Orly Anan Studio) had a punk-rock, sci-fi feel. The piece was futuristic yet rooted to the earth by the muted tones of the unitards in reds, grays, and white (and one dancer in purple).
The piece began with a single dancer in a rust-colored unitard on a stark stage with a red moon (or sun?). As the light brightened, and more dancers entered the stage, the design of eyes, noses, and lips painted on the unitards became visible and gave the piece a sexual tone. As a group, they sometimes danced on the beat and sometimes glided over it. Sometimes the beat was punctuated with an isolation of the chest or hips, and other times dancers were lifted and twirled in unusual positions. At one point, they formed a line and each was given a few seconds of movement—possibly improvisational—to highlight the strength and style of each dancer.
Miller’s work is a pairing of abstract movement and conceptual ideas, which means movement comes first and does not hinge on a story. If there is a story, perhaps it will change the experience, but the work stimulates a visceral curiosity without one. Some of the movement vocabulary clearly references Graham and Batsheva, whose influences seem ever-present, but Miller explores the boundaries of what a dancing body can do — not by pushing codified movement in new directions or repeating what her predecessors have done — but by looking at the body and seeing what shapes it can bend and move into before it might break.
By Nicole Colbert of Dance Informa.
