GALLIM Artistic Director and Founder Andrea Miller will premiere a new dance film for Northrop based on her piece, BOAT, on Thu, Nov 19 with Helix Films’ Ben Stamper. The film will be available online through Sun, Nov 29. We asked Miller to describe the work and her experience creating it:
I first met Northrop’s Director of Programming Kristen Brogdon at Hubbard Street when I was a young choreographer. From the time when I was an emerging choreographer to now, I have always felt her presence and support, which she has offered to so many artists, venues, and audiences for years on end.
BOAT is originally a dance work to be performed live in the theater. Pre-COVID, my company, GALLIM, was planning to perform BOAT live at Northrop this very month. Thanks to Kristen and her visionary leadership, our tour was instead transformed into a film. The tour could have easily been postponed until after the pandemic or canceled entirely, but Kristen decided to keep our work alive. We spoke of many possibilities and when the idea of a film came up, she made it come true. We had promised work for the dancers and my staff; so being able to continue to provide this work and experience creativity in these challenging times felt like a miracle and gift all bundled together.
The filming of BOAT was not a straight documentation of the dance. It is its own creation—an endeavor with the medium of film, a collaboration with a brilliant filmmaker, and an adventure with inspiring dancers.
I have long wanted to make a film, work with film, and collaborate with filmmakers. In this pandemic and due to the constraints of this time, I have jumped at opportunities to learn and create with this magical medium. Ben Stamper, the filmmaker and co-director of BOAT, is a long-time collaborator, and for four years we have both invested in developing a very meaningful artistic relationship. In the past few months, we have made four unique films together, and I think the outpouring of this creativity comes from the many years of talking, listening, and watching art, dance, film, and life together. Ben brought magic to this story and made something I could have never imagined without him.
When you dance in the theater, you have empty space to fill with fantasy and imagery. As a choreographer and dancer, you have to conjure the sense of being immersed in water or thrown around by stormy winds. But when you’re actually filming in water, some of the movements you did on stage make no sense in locations you previously had to evoke. Why are you pretending to be in water if you are actually in water? The dancers and I had to make big adjustments to adapt and renew our understanding of the movements and the story.
Similarly, abstraction can give room to witness or process difficult things, but seeing someone lying down on a stage is quite different than looking at a lifeless body on the shoreline of a beach. I learned how the realness of film quickly fills in the spaces that abstraction would allow for wandering. Working with the realness of film was both a delight and a challenge—both of which I am so grateful to have been given.
