Celeste Miller has made her career as a solo performer, choreographer, writer, community arts animator and educator. Her performance style is a combination of spoken word and movement that plumbs narrative for physical imagery in juxtaposed connection with text.
She toured extensively with her full-length solo performance repertoire from 1983-2003, creating over fifty-five original text + movement works. Her work was presented in venues that included theatres, galleries, cafes, rock clubs and grange halls. From the avant-garde hot bed of New York City’s downtown dance scene at PS 122, to Symphony Hall in Atlanta; from the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; to the Los Angeles Fringe Festival to homes and schools throughout rural Montana – Celeste’s work has been witnessed and acclaimed by critics and audience members alike.
Fellowships and awards for her work include the National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowship, The Atlanta Mayor’s Fellowship in the Arts, Individual Artist Fellowship for Solo Theatrical Performance by the Maryland State Arts Council, Massachusetts New Playwrights Fellowship; as well as grants and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, Atlanta Circle of Drama Critics, City of Atlanta, Fulton County Arts Council of Atlanta and arts councils in Georgia, Massachusetts and Maryland. Among the commissions for her work are those from Atlanta's High Museum of Art, Augusta Museum of Art, Grinnell College, Emory University, American Festival Project, Smithsonian’s Discovery Theatre, Boston Dance Umbrella, American Festival Project, Columbia College, New Orleans Ballet Dance Collective, Florida Dance Festival, and Balance Dance Company. Celeste’s work with community arts projects includes the two-year long Nurses Project, celebrating and honoring the nurses of Cape Ann; and the three-year American Festival Project Big Sky Spinning created in collaboration with composer Philip Aaberg drawn from the stories of five Montana communities.
As Artist-in-Residence, and later co-artistic director with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange from 1999-2003, she worked on Lerman's national Hallelujah project as project leader, choreographer and performer.
From 2006-2013 she was part of the artistic team for Headwaters, a community story play centered in the community of Sautee-Nacochee in Georgia.
Celeste was the director of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s Choreographer’s Lab focusing on dance and community engagement from 1993-2010; and has been the co-founder and director of Jacob’s Pillow Curriculum in Motion since 1993. This nationally recognized program is a leader in the field of exploring the use of dance-making as a method for learning classroom curricular material. An article outlining her particular approach is being published by Cambria Press in "Hybrid Lives of Teaching Artists in Dance and Theatre Arts: A Critical Reader"
Currently Celeste is Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Grinnell College, a position that allows her to combine her love for teaching with her investigation of dance as a performing art, cultural practice, political act and a method for the embodiment of ideas and beliefs.
She continues her work as co-founder and director of Big If Dance Experiments - an open collective of artists from all disciplines who gather in Atlanta to explore ideas through writing and embodied expression. The name ”Big If” comes from Charles Darwin. In a letter to Joseph D. Hooker in 1871 Darwin wrote, ”It is often said that all the conditions necessary for the first production of a living being are now present. But if (and oh, what a big if)….”