Biography: Krista Miller

Krista Miller is a choreographer, dancer, teacher, and performance artist with twenty-two years of national and international experience. In 2005 she founded the Mt Shasta City Dance Theater in rural Northern California to give form to a union of dance, theater, and vocal performance that nurtures and challenges the human spirit. The Jefferson Economic Development Institute awarded Miller their 2005 Micro Enterprise Business Innovation Award for her work in developing Mt Shasta City Dance Theater.

A resident of New York City for ten years, Miller worked and toured throughout the US, Korea, and Europe with notable choreographers including Lucinda Childs, David Gordon, Ralph Lemon, Eun Me Ahn, and Nicholas Leichter. While working with Lucinda Childs Dance Company, Miller earned the honor of assisting teaching Ms. Childs' classic choreography, Concerto, to Mikhail Baryshnikov and his highly regarded White Oak Dance Project.

Passionate about increasing the presence of the arts particularly in rural communities, Miller relocated to Northern California in 2002 where she has worked for six years. Siskiyou County, her home, is an under-served, low-income, multi-cultural population that has demonstrated a growing interest in the performing arts.

While there, Miller has created, directed, and produced five evening-length dance theater events. These creations have employed over 120 local dancers, actors, musicians, and filmmakers, and elevated the art form of modern dance to public awareness for the first time for many. The ten original works currently in Miller's repertory use text, dance, and song presented by one to twelve performers.

Recently, Mt Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center and Mountain Classics commissioned her work, and Redding City Ballet, Shadow Box Players and Mt Shasta Senior Theater have repeatedly invited her as guest choreographer. Miller has showcased her work throughout NYC and New Jersey, at The Yard Performing Arts Colony (Martha's Vineyard, MA), and at the American Dance Festival (Durham, NC).

In performance, Miller is known for her comedic timing and versatility. Paul Boerger of The Mt Shasta Herald wrote of her performance of Snoopy in the musical You're a Good Man Charlie Brown with the Mt Shasta Repertory Theater Company: "(the) song and dance performed by Krista Miller is hands down the show stopper. Miller is a fine energetic dancer and her Snoopy is, well, just so Snoopy." (November 16, 2005)

Miller has 30 years of classical ballet training, as well as vocal and music training, a BFA in Dance from Montclair State University (Magna Cum Laude), and ongoing continuing education in acting, choreography, writing, and visual arts. She has taught ballet, modern, African, salsa, choreography, jazz, hip hop, and Pilates at studios and schools, east and west - most notably, New York University, Montclair State University, Hunter College, Ballet Academy East, Redding City Ballet, and College of the Siskiyous. She produced concerts of student work in 2005 and 2006 that brought to artistic life issues of personal importance to the student dancers.

With rehearsals for her latest project, H2O Manifesto, underway, Miller is actively raising funds to support this work-in-progress’ planned 2009 premiere and subsequent tour of California and Oregon schools and theaters. Miller is currently marketing her work to theaters, arts presenters, festivals, and community organizations nationally and beyond.

Artist Statement

H2O Manifesto is born of my love of and gratitude for fresh, clean water, a love as nourishing as my love for dance, theater, and music. My goal is to create a bridge, through performance, between opposing ideologies concerning water management over which people may choose to walk; or, to inspire people to build their own bridges of understanding with H2O Manifesto as catalyst.

My work as a whitewater raft guide for the last six years, Class IV – V, has further drawn the soul of the river to my own. If you fall out of your raft, the rapids can pull you underwater and keep you there. This is the feared "keeper hole." The more you struggle, the tighter the hydraulic may hold you. Your blood screams for oxygen; panic hovers over you. Only by relaxing and changing the shape of your submerged body will a new slip of water catch you, convey you, and pop you out in a calm pool, grateful for breath and life and even water.

These experiences are part of the inspiration for H2O Manifesto. Our current model of resource management is much like a giant keeper hole. While I want to fight, raise my fist, and demand the outcome of my choice, a more effective response may be to change my shape, perhaps try on the shape of my so-called enemies, and see if the understanding I achieve helps me to find that lifesaving current back to the surface.

My response is an emotionally charged work of dance, theater, and voice in service of the water and the human life dependent on it. I wish to share the work with communities facing similar challenges, nationally and internationally. I look forward to accomplishing this project with an incredible crew of co-creators, both on-stage and in the audience.

Return to H2O Manifesto on Siskiyou Arts Council.