Amanda Miller is Artistic Director of Miro Dance Theatre, acompany established in 2004 to explore the intersections of dance, video andthe visual arts. She was a Co-Founder/Director of Phrenic New Ballet and was a dancer with the Pennsylvania Ballet from 1993 through 2002. Her choreographic works have been performed nationally and internationally, with commissions by The Philadelphia Museum of Art, PRISM Saxophone Quartet and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Ms. Miller's performance experience includes world premieres by Dwight Rhoden, Jorma Elo, Doug Elkins, Antony Rizzi, Thaddeus Davis, and Jodie Gates, and has allowed her the opportunity to work with Alonzo King, Trey McIntyre, Lar Lubavitch, Risa Steinberg, Igal Perry, and London, England's Siobhan Davies. She has performed with the Opera Company of Philadelphia since 2003.

Miller has studied the choreographic and improvisational techniques of Alonzo King and, most recently, the choreographic methods of Siobhan Davies, with whom she has worked for the past few years.

Ms. Miller was a recipient of theLeeway Foundation's Window of Opportunity grant in 2003 for her choreographicwork with the Londonbased new opera company Sharpwire, and has been awarded the Dance Advancegrant, a program of the Pew Charitable Trust, in 2004 and 2005 for herchoreography. From 2004-2006 Miller was a resident of the Choreographer'sProject at Susan Hess Modern Dance. Her work for Berk's Ballet was selected forthe Gala Program at the 2006 RDA Festival and she is currently a member of theInternational Dance Council(CID)-UNESCO. Miller was a finalist for the 2007 PewFellowship in Choreography.

Artist Statement: I am a painter, inside a ballerina, inside a tattooed time bomb wrapped in a pink ribbon. I value ballet, not for its surface pictures but for its fundamental insights into gravity, anatomy, and space, and in my 15 years in the professional ballet world I began to distill some of the core principles of ballet movement. As a choreographer, I use those principles outside of the narrow confines of ballet aesthetics, moving the dancing body beyond the ballet vocabulary, beyond a state of restating the familiar, and into a body that is not afraid to bend, twist, balance, fall, stretch, and be still.

My work is process-based, heavily influenced by my time with Siobhan Davies and my collaborations with video artist Tobin Rothlein. I begin with research-gathering information and source material that will provoke my dancers and collaborators. Using assignments, images, and improvisations we generate personal, detailed material, particular to these bodies, this moment,this subject. Then, like a painter, I combine, collide and collage the materials, looking for the poetic insight that the body can bring, and for the personification of the stories, states, and relationships that are uniquely dance.

I am conscious of the complete visual picture- the size and scale of the stage setting, the proximity to the audience, and the integration of all the performance elements. My work seeks to engage the audience by opening up a visual world where they find personal connections and have an emotional relationship to the work, and to the dancers.

My years as a ballet dancer provide a disciplined and physical structure from which to work, while my studies in contemporary choreography have given me the tools to push beyond those aesthetics, finding movement and imagery that are relevant to each moment, and each performance.