American Dance Festival Made in NC Amanda K. Miller Interview

I don't know how to describe my work. That's why I always wish to create it.

So says choreographer, opera director and educator Amanda K. Miller who is one of the four artists commissioned to create new works for the Summer 2026 American Dance Festival. Though Miller hails from Chapel Hill originally, her work has taken her far from NC before returning in 2009. From 1984 - 1992 Miller worked with Ballet Frankfurt. Later in Germany, she created and worked with the Pretty Ugly Dance Company from 1992 until 2009. Based in Germany, Pretty Ugly also toured internationally. Miller later founded Yummy Dance, an improvisational and multi-disciplinary dance company in Matsuyama, Japan.

Here, Picture This Post (PTP) interviews Amanda K. Miller (AKM) about her approach to choreography in general and her upcoming piece for the American Dance Festival.

(PTP) Please share with Picture This Post readers what you are planning for your ADF-commissioned work to premiere at the Made in NC performance.

(AKM) The title is Je Crois. I think because we all do think universally in different ways. When I am thinking it is a bridge to my imagination.

This will be a new piece for ADF— the first piece I have made for a proscenium stage in a while.I'm very excited. Thinking and dreaming about it makes me very curious about the process and the performance.

Describing a work that has not been created is difficult. One can imagine, prepare, think, create a vocabulary but we won't know till we get there.

There will be a quartet of women. The piece has a myriad of sub-context. The five of us have never worked together before.

36 people were at the audition. I imagined a quartet so only four people could be chosen.Yet all the participants and their 1 minute solos were an immense inspiration. That was a new piece in itself.

It will be very intuitive how we work together, respond to each other, our thoughts and ideas. How they transform the choreography and music into their own artistic expressions. We do not have much time for a creation. Yet we will do our best.

Inspirations for this work include: Rainer Maria Rilke Book of Hours; the poetry of Agnes Martin, Louise Bourgeois, and Patti Smith; and fractals; the music collage and its history. We will collect artifacts and inspirations and bring these into the studio. The events in the world will be reflected in the new work—questions I have and visceral responses I feel. The four dancers themselves will be a great inspiration and what they bring to the process.

Rilke wrote and dedicated The Book of Hours to artists. He admired, revered, and reflected upon the capacity of consciousness and the humanity that artists hold.

What is Amanda Science and how does it bear on this new work?

Amanda Science is an expression created when I began instructing in the USA. My work significantly shifted from Pretty Ugly Dance Company to teaching at schools, universities, and with community projects. Because of this shift, the work needed a recognizable identity. It helped clarify my methods, philosophies and terminology amidst my own discoveries and those of the students. We thought the name Amanda science would help explain all the exploratory methods we used and be fun. In more recent workshops it is called Imaginative Series/ Landscapes of Embodiment.

To excerpt an explanation given in an MFA Artist talk I gave—My intense involvement with the Rudolf Laban 9 point system, classical ballet training, my contemporary movement instruction and expressive vocabulary are all involved in this hybrid. This is used as a discovery process for individuals to invent themselves without thinking about choreography, design or imitation. It is an indefinable sensation, feeling, instinct, and therefore we are always in the middle of it while searching for it. It centers on the idea of hope, inspiration, quiet determination and the endless possibilities of our imaginations for invention."

Amanda Science aka Imaginative Series is a very integral part of my creative work and philosophy. It is all inclusive. Once the tools and foundation are understood it can be practiced on stage, in studios, homes, grocery stores, hospitals, parks, and even once at a Tibetan children's monastery. It is a bit hard to explain without practicing it or being introduced to it. There is a quiet awareness created within oneself that resonates outside of yourself. It is peripheral vision for the entire body— interior and exterior. Within a performance, it lets the performer break down the 4th wall— that invisible wall /mask often felt between performers and audiences. It allows sensitive communication between the performers themselves and the audience and helps bring presence into the present moment. Disarmament.

How has working with different audiences— in Europe vs. USA, in opera productions and theater—impacted your work?

I think audiences have their own individual culture wherever they are. I try to be aware of this, and try to adapt my work towards them while I still keep my own integrity to the art that I/we are creating and performing. Sometimes my work is more easily understood in Europe and sometimes in the USA. India and Japan are two places where my work and Pretty Ugly's was generously received. I wonder more about my work's adaptability between various generations of artists and audiences.

Working with opera and theater has deeply impacted me. Opera singers and actors have their own unique approach to their craft. Because they do work with a libretto or text it is interesting to help them find and embody the movement with their text. We focus on how to manipulate the space between and within their text and bodies. Working with a defined narrative is both a challenge and a relief. In my pieces I rarely have a defined narrative. I choreographed A Midsummers Night Dream for Geneva Ballet, and Oberon's Flower for Pretty Ugly. The denseness of theater and opera stage design can be intimidating. I like the challenge and learn from it.

I really do love and am passionate about working in an opera house, theater, music venue, dance house, or abandoned warehouses. Opera singers , actors, musicians, set design, costume, stage crew , lighting, and everyone involved have their own specific craft and skills. I love dealing with all the materials involved with the making of it all. When I worked with Pretty Ugly in Freiburg, Koln or on tour, I made a tremendous effort to know everyone or at least introduce myself where I was working.

What brought you to NC? How has living in NC impacted you as a choreographer?

I returned to NC to be with my Mother. I was born and raised in Chapel Hill. Also, I want to share the experiences and knowledge I have accumulated through my work in Europe and Japan. I attended University of North Carolina School of the Arts when I just turned 14, went on to NYC, then danced with Chicago Lyric Opera, moved to West Berlin( 1978/79) where I danced with Deutsche Opera Berlin, Frankfurt Ballet, then created Pretty Ugly Dance Company and later Yummy Dance in Japan. It was time to come home.

T.S. Elliot wrote We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

I am a very curious person. With every piece I try to digest the work and where I feel the weakest points or the failures I try to go from there. Not really to correct them but let them be a structure for development and growth. A world of hieroglyphics in momentum creating moving images as poetry which hopefully are keys to a viewer's imagination and reach the hearts of the dancers. I don't know how to describe my work. That's why I always wish to create it.