DANSPACE PROJECT PRESENTS
Bebe Miller Company: Open Rehearsal of Vespers, Reimagined (2025)
Saturday, November 9 | 12PM
Choreographer & Director: Bebe Miller
Performers: Bria Bacon, Jasmine Hearn, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Chloe London, Stacy Matthew Spence
Choreographic/Archival Associate: Angie Hauser
Project Manager: Lila Hurwitz
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Bebe Miller’s vision of dance and performance resides in her faith in the moving body as a record of thought, experience and sheer beauty. She has collaborated with artists, composers, writers, and designers, along with the dancers who share her studio practice and from whom she’s learned what dancing can reveal. A native New Yorker, she formed Bebe Miller Company in 1985. Since then, the Company has been commissioned by Brooklyn Academy of Music’s NEXT WAVE Festival, The Joyce Theater, Wexner Center for the Arts, On The Boards, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Theater Artaud, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, Dance Theater Workshop, New York Live Arts and Danspace Project, and has performed worldwide. The Company’s work encompasses choreography, writing and film, along with digital archive products that share their creative practice. Bebe is a Professor Emerita at Ohio State University, and though her home is in Columbus, OH, she is spending a year in a forest on Vashon Island, WA.
Bria Bacon is a 20-something, queer, performing artist. Although she is predominantly trained in movement art/dance, she holds passions and gifts in writing, sound-making, and theater. She has worked with Sally Silvers Dance, ChameckiLerner, Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Stephen Petronio Company, and Kyle Marshall Choreography, as well as Beth Gill and Rachel Comey in NYFW and Company Christoph Winkler in Berlin. Recently, she was cast in the immersive dance-theatre show Life and Trust as a contributing choreographer and performer. Currently, she is a member of Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group. Originally from Munsee-Lenape lands in New Jersey, Bacon resides on Munsee-Lenape lands in Brooklyn. All praise to the angels, ancestors, and folx within her village.
Jasmine Hearn, born and raised on occupied Akokisa lands (Houston, TX), is an interdisciplinary artist, teacher, doula, performer, and organizer. They also lead Memory Fleet—a performance and archive project supported by the New England Foundation of the Arts with a National Dance Project Grant (2024). Jasmine is also a recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2023), a Creative Capital award (2022), and New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards for Outstanding Performer (2021, 2017). Jasmine has collaborated with Dream the Combine, Bill T. Jones, Saul Williams, Solange Knowles, Alisha B. Wormsley, Vanessa German, Marjani Forté-Saunders, Lovie Olivia, Tsedaye Makonnen, and Holly Bass; with companies Urban Bush Women, David Dorfman Dance, and Helen Simoneau Danse performing at the Metropolitan Museum, BAM, New York Live Arts, Guggenheim Museum, Getty Center, Venice Biennale, Ford Foundation, Danspace Project, BAAD!, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, and the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Shayla-Vie Jenkins is a Philadelphia-based performer, maker, educator, poetry lover, writer, and mama. She is grateful for her life in dance, having performed for a decade with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and in inspiring projects with artists such as Faye Driscoll, Susan Marshall, Moriah Evans, David Gordon, Sage Ni’Ja Whitson, and Yara Travieso to name a few. Jenkins was an Assistant Professor in the School of Dance at the University of the Arts and is currently guest teaching at Bennington College. Her creative research explores the intersection of Blackness and somatic presence, with her choreographic works embodying performance as a ritual act of mourning and catharsis.
Chloe London is a choreographer and performer based between NYC and Northampton, MA. She graduated in May 2023 with her MFA in Performance & Choreography from Smith College and is a Dance Lecturer at UMass Amherst and Mount Holyoke College. She dances for Alex Davis, Barbie Diewald, and Gabrielle Revlock. Chloe is also choreographing an evening-length work commissioned by Triskelion Arts, premiering in April 2025. She is honored to be dancing with Bebe Miller Company as part of Vespers, Reimagined.
Stacy Matthew Spence is a NYC-based choreographer, dancer, and teacher. His choreography has been commissioned by The High Line with visual artist Ronny Quevedo, Danspace Project, The New School, Ishmael Houston-Jones’s Platform 2012: Parallels and Tisch School of the Arts. Stacy has performed in works by Margaret Peak, Deborah Hay, Ralph Lemon, Joanna Kotze and others. His work I am, here; Here with us; Where we find ourselves, premiered at Danspace in March and is being remounted for Danspace and New York Live Arts in 2025. Stacy is creating a film version of I am, here with videographer Iki Nakagawa. Stacy danced with The Trisha Brown Dance Company (1997–2006), was Education Director (2018–2021), and continues teaching and re-staging with TBDC. He has taught at Juilliard, Barnard, Tisch, Manhattan Marymount College, London Contemporary Dance School, Centre National de Danse Contemporaine, Movement Research and elsewhere. Stacy is an instructor at The New School.
Angie Hauser is a “Bessie” Award-winning dancer whose work is grounded in improvisation and performance. She is a principal collaborator with Bebe Miller Company contributing to the work as a performer, writer, and choreographic collaborator since 2000. Other dancemaking projects include collaborations with dance artists Chris Aiken, Darrell Jones, Jennifer Nugent, and Kathleen Hermesdorf. She has taught dance, improvisation, and choreography throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and in South America. She received her MFA in dance from the Ohio State University. She is currently a Professor at Smith College where she directs the Graduate Program in Dance.
Danspace Project pays respect to Lenape peoples. We acknowledge that this work is situated on the Lenape island of Manhattan (Mannahatta) in Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland. We pay respect to Lenape land, water, and ancestors past, present and future.
ABOUT DANSPACE PROJECT
Danspace Project presents new work in dance, supports a diverse range of choreographers in developing their work, encourages experimentation, and connects artists to audiences. For 50 years, Danspace Project has supported a vital community of contemporary dance artists in an environment unlike any other in the United States. Located in the historic St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, Danspace shares its facility with the Church, The Poetry Project, and New York Theatre Ballet. Danspace Project’s Commissioning Initiative has commissioned nearly 600 new works since its inception in 1994. More about our staff, our mission, and values For information on our funders, visit danspaceproject.org/support FOLLOW US @danspaceproject danspaceproject.org