Pink Slips and Short Toes: An Interview with Celeste Miller

Celeste Miller is resident artist with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. She took part in several "Hallelujahs," and was very active at "Hallelujah/USA," the culminating event of the company's national community-performance initiative. I spoke with her on August 1, 2003, during the creation phase of new work for the upcoming performance finale. — LB

Celeste Miller (sitting, right) with Liz Lerman in "Hallelujah/USA" workshop. Photo by Linda Burnham

Linda Burnham: Has the Dance Exchange come up with any new techniques for "Hallelujah/USA"?

Celeste Miller: As the company began four weeks ago, we got together in that first company meeting and we made a buddy system. Liz decided that for her to be able to do her best possible editing work, she needed to not have to be taking care of people's individual feelings in a given moment. She just really needs to make the best possible work. Now, of course she does take care, that's who she is, but to relieve herself from the pressure of — "Omigod if I cut X dance moment from X person, is she going to fall apart?  I can't keep it in just because I'm afraid emotionally that she can't handle it. For the sake of the dance, it needs to be cut." And, Liz aside, we all knew that this was going to be an extremely high-pressure period for everybody, where we'd all have the ability to fray each others nerves. So (laughs), I pulled out this bright pink paper and we put everybody's names on a piece of paper and the names in a basket and everybody took one, and that became your buddy. Because we're all artists, it became everybody's "pink slip" so everybody has their pink-slip buddy. What we do is, if you feel for some reason, something's not going right or you were cut or you were edited or you got a comment that you feel was inappropriate, you go to your pink-slip buddy and you talk to them. And you let them know, "I'm going to you as my pink-slip buddy," so you both know how to handle the conversation. So, if somebody comes to me as their pink-slip buddy, my job is to do really good listening and then help my pink-slip buddy figure out what their action is going to be. The action could be, "I just needed to vent. I'm over it." Or it could be, "I need to talk to Liz and tell her that she needs to keep this in because it's the most brilliant piece of choreography ever."

LB: Does that ever happen? Does that ever work?

CM: Yes, because then what'll happen is, if somebody says, "This moment is actually totally brilliant choreographically," then Liz will engage in conversation, she'll say, "Okay, tell me why, because I don't see it yet." Then, more likely than not, in that dialogue of what somebody's intention is, then those two people or that bunch of people can work together to craft it so that it does become whatever it was who envisioned it wants to be. They may just not be reading it that well.

LB: Any other little things that were created just for this event?

CM:  If you trust the people you're working with and have invested them with that trust, then the problems are easy. And we can't be tip-toeing around afraid to step on someone's toes. So we agreed to have "short toes" these two weeks. "My toes are really short" means I'm really open. "How short are your toes today?" means "How open are you to change?" As we entered this intense period of time, so much has to be made and edited at the same time. You'll hear those little code words.

LB: I'm really curious how you think the Dance Exchange creation process has changed over time with "Hallelujah." Like, I'm sure you've been having a lot of big confabs about how things went in Minneapolis and Michigan, and how are we going to run this the very best way.

CM: I think one of the things the company has gotten really good at is what it means to take a mini-commission from Liz, so when she says, "Go work with those ten community participants and create XYZ," that there's an ability to go and do that, to go make a really good work, to make the absolutely best work that you can do, and how to come back and how to channel the commissions a little bit. So, understanding now what questions need to be asked so you can go away and do the best commission and come back with it rather than get off on a tangent.

LB: Do you call them commissions? That makes you a choreographer.

CM: It does, it gets everybody engaged in the process. And something that Liz does all the time, which I think the company has gotten more fluent at, is Liz always teaches in every moment. Say there's a whole room full of people and they're working on a circle phrase, she'll never just say, "Oh, let's turn it into diagonals instead." She'll always explain why, so there's this constant education going on, and it's so great. And the company now does it as well. So, I think that part of everybody's learning through "Hallelujah" is learning how to become more and more articulate in their processes, and they are constantly annotating it as they go along.

LB: This whole two years has just been this constant practice of learning how to take charge of pieces of this. And it seems to me that each of the company members has gotten stronger as a teacher, as an autonomous being, as a collaborator, all the parts, and now when I see them perform, I feel like I see these amazing different individuals, each one with really outstanding different kinds of technique in terms of being teachers and dealing with people who have never danced before and all the things that must be taken care of in order to make it happen. When you think of it, instead of thinking of the initiative as a long, exhausting deal, it was really a chance to practice, really graduate school. Do you think anybody dropped out of the initiative from getting exhausted or getting fed up with it?

CM: I don't think so, but I am a bit on the fringe of "Hallelujah."

LB: Yes, because you were kind of the baby sitter. That must have been hard to run the Dance Exchange. Were you pretty much in charge?

CM: No, it's still run by the executive director, and Liz and our leadership team.

LB: But they were gone so much.

CM: But not all at once, because everything goes out in teams.

LB: What are you going to do after "Hallelujah?" I know it's going to be a kind of rest and contemplation, or it's supposed to be.

CM: No, because my "Epiphanies" project kicks in, and Peter's "Near/Far/In/Out." So, it'll be a resting period for Liz, it'll be projects not of the size of "Hallelujah," a different scope. But I think size is interesting to think of. How deep is deep, how big is big, how small is small?

Linda Frye Burnham is co-director of the Community Arts Network.

Original CAN/API publication: March 2003