Miller Choreographs the Ambiguities in Relationships

On the stage of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, a man and a woman face each other in what looks to be a standoff: He glares at her, She at him, and somehow we get the impression that all is not well here.

Plainly, this moment in “Habits of Attraction,” one of a trio of new dances choreographed by Bebe Miller, depicts the worry and indifference of a relationship in which the bonds of intimacy and trust have long been broken. But then She wraps her ankle around the back of his neck, awkwardly pulling him closer as she falls to the ground beneath him. We see that this is not the end of their relationship, but rather the way this couple have come to resolve their problems in a welter of power games.

Such images of seduction, submission and domination are the special terrain of choreographer Bebe Miller, who is bringing her company to the La Jolla Museum’s Sherwood Auditorium today and Saturday as part of the sixth Neofest, a festival of new art.

Though Miller calls “Habit of Attraction” and other works the “Hell Dances,” she says they are not exactly about hell but about “the hellishness of ambiguity,” the way contemporary sexual relations have turned men and women into bundles of appetite and confusion, addicted to attraction.

“I like people,” says Miller, who came to attention dancing the neo-Tharpian dances of Nina Weiner and Dana Reitz’s austerely minimalist dances.

“I’m not your average abstract mover. But it’s one thing to make dances about abstract relationships between people and something else when you start making dances about situations in which people aren’t getting along very well.

“When men and women deal with each other, at some level it reduces to the fact that we are opposing members of the species. It’s either my turf, your turf, or if we’re lucky, it’s not anybody’s turf, it’s ours --if we ever get that far.”

While Miller claims that her current work was not inspired by any single crise de coeur , she does admit that the “Hell Dances” are an attempt to translate the ambiguity of love relationships into dance.

“I’m just at a time in my life when I’m not only dealing with my own relationships but I’m also trying to figure out what’s important to me,” she explains.

“There’s a group here,” she says, referring to her company. “They have to stay together. Do they like it? Certainly not all the time, so what happens when it’s working? When it’s not working? When someone ignores someone else and has no idea what’s really going on beneath the surface?”

It’s the psychological ambiguities that are built into dance-making that are intriguing, she says.

“In ‘Habit of Attraction,’ I was definitely dealing with two couples starting from some neutral place, and then charting different directions out from there. It was curious, even to me, that one couple ends up staying together while the other couple doesn’t.

“That wasn’t something I planned, but it seems there’s a certain built-in inevitability. . . . That was the most interesting thing to me choreographically, trying to figure out what makes things inescapable.”

Miller is a polymath of different dance techniques and styles. A native New Yorker who went to college in Indiana and then earned her graduate dance degree at Ohio State, she spent six years dancing with Nina Weiner before realizing she was actually more at home with the subculture of so-called downtown dance in New York.

“Nina was cool in a whole ‘nother way,” Miller says. “She was stylish and elegant, and I began to realize that I really loved the hype of downtown dance. I’m not really of the shoeless, loose pants school, but it’s what I feel most at home watching and doing.”

Two Bessie Awards later--Miller is the only choreographer to have been so honored in two consecutive years--she still seems unsure of her direction.

“Things are never what they seem,” she says wistfully. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about relationships--or making dances--it’s that you really can’t count on reality. Things are just not under your control.”