What is it that makes a dance performance uniquely memorable? It can be many things and different for different people, but there is a certain something that one can sense but not readily describe.
I would go so far as to say it is something that is not valued as much as it should be in these days of extremes and excesses. It is that aura of integrity and authenticity — not just in the way the dancers perform, but in the way that the works were created. One can sense the detailed journey taken by these artists to arrive at this moment onstage that we are able to experience as an audience.
Gallim, founded and led by choreographer Andrea Miller, is a nine-member New York City dance company that has been pushing the boundaries of contemporary dance since 2007 with its exploration of the limitless potential of the human body in movement.
Miller’s methodology for creating choreography has resulted in an endless stream of unusual, fascinating and nuanced movement. The sculpted-yet-kinetic energy flow and patterns, whether performed by one or many, hint at anthropological origins and leave a multitude of intriguing images to savor.
Gallim was the second offering on the 2026 season of the popular Modern Dance Series at the Duncan Theatre on the campus of Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth. The performance on January 30 presented six works choreographed by Miller to a variety of musical scores. With boundless energy and tremendous physicality, the company’s collective of outstanding dancers gave their hearts and souls to deliver Miller’s vision in a program that was sophisticated and well-balanced.
The calm of State, a work from 2018, set the stage for the evening. The 19-minute trio for Vivian Pakkanen, India Hobbs and Victoria Chasse Domingo was truly mesmerizing as the three women methodically unfolded a series of movements as if it were a practiced ritual that centered their spirits and bodies.
Against an orange cyc that hinted of a rising sun, the three moved as one in perfect unison slowly across a large, rust-colored carpet. With elbows and knees painted gold, they were dressed in identical, serf-like, dark gray shirts with one long sleeve over short trunks designed by Jose Solis. They were quintessentially feminine. The three women danced with calmness and beauty to an original score by Reginald “River” Wilkins, which layered rhythms with the mellow tone of a woman’s voice that was replaced by a strange death rattle breathing, then children’s voices, later singing birds, and finally an apocalyptic type of sound for the ending.
At one point, the women arched up from the floor on their shoulders and feet and pushed to slide flat which they repeated like a snake shedding their skin — or was it a birthing move? The women continued and seemed to gained strength and unity in their beautifully synchronized movement as the cyc glowed orange again indicating the ending cycle of a day. Nicole Pierce’s lighting design added a richness and warmth to the work that drew in the audience, inviting them to become intimate with Miller’s distinctly different and subtle movement.
Middle Length Poem (2017) was another moment to marvel and wonder where Miller’s inspiration for movement originates. Her style of creating in the studio does rely on a strong interaction with the dancer ,who then strives to embody her vision through their personal being. Miller spoke in the post-performance talk and talked about how keen she still is about exploring the use of complete space — the sky, the earth and the middle (humanity).
In this solo work, Donovan Reed took on the challenge. For eight minutes, he barreled through the three levels of space. Strong and muscular, Reed began slow and controlled. His low-centered, gymnastic movement was personal and nuanced, moving to electronic music layered with sounds of water, chimes and wind by Joran Chiolis.
The next work, Bruce (2007), a group piece, was a nice changeup. With the lyrics “We should shine a light on,” Vincent Vigilante, the lighting designer, did just that. A row of white lights on the apron floor of the stage blasted the line of dancers who were backed up against a stark white cyc making it look almost like a police lineup until the music by Balkan Beat Box and Joanna Newsom ignited the dancers into a frenzied silliness of dance moves.
Dressed in tuxedo shirts and black pants, three men (Bryan Testa, Donterro Culp and Marc Anthony Gutierrez) tried to out dance three women (Hobbs, Pakkanen and Dominguez), dressed in short sequined dresses. Their infectious energy was lively fun and delightfully freeform.
The second half of the program started with Desde, an ensemble work that Miller choreographed in 2019. Briana Del Mundo, with her lovely classical lines, was added to the cast that included the seven dancers seen in the previous works. This was an intriguing but more somber piece that highlighted the company’s incredible and intricate partnering skills.
The lighting design by Pierce immediately set the tone: It was black and smoke-filled. Sounds of broken glass filled our ears as the dancers entered. One duet after another ensued as a salmon-colored strip of lights lowered across the back of the stage. Each duet was filled with the most unexpected and unusual lifts that were carefully synchronized to the sound score by Nicolas Jaar.
The strength and agility of each dancer was impressive, making the challenging partnering seem effortless. Numerous times lifts would end in drops from sky to earth or lifts up from earth to sky. The final fantastic lift was of Gutierrez walking slowly balancing Hobbs on his head in an arched bowl shape — toes and face curved skyward — as if she were a large sombrero. Such amazing control!
The stand-alone duet that followed, which Miller choreographed in 2022 in collaboration with Gillam, was perhaps a little out of the genre of the rest program. It was set to the familiar song No Ordinary Love by Sade, and it was danced by Gutierrez and Antonia Luz (who is from Miami and attended the New World School). Neutral in costume with Luz in a black slip and Gutierrez in black pants and white shirt, and neutral in the colorless side lighting that cut the dark space with sharp diagonals, the duet was anything but neutral in movement.
Lush and emotional, it was richly danced by the two, who moved so fully and with such commitment that the stage seemed small. Accentuating the quickness of the movement with clarity and sharp attack, they vacillated between coming together and separating. Towards the end, one ran across to the other side of the stage as the other ran faster to be there to catch them, and this repeated with great speed — back and forth, back and forth and back and forth.
The evening ended with one of the company’s most popular and most requested works, Sama, which Miller choreographed in collaboration with Rambert II and The Julliard School in 2019 to the music of Jaar, Vladimir Zaldwich, and Frédéric Despierre. The full company work, which had an Indian motif both in the driving rhythms of the musical score and the Hare Krishna orange costuming, is, according to Miller, about accessing the physical experience and having a space to express oneself and transcend through movement.
The work boiled over to a ritualistic frenzy of individual movement that was primal and animalistic with flailing arms and pounding body parts on the floor, which ended in an abrupt spurt of light and then darkness and silence.