A Ballerina Steps Into the Spotlight With Swan Queen Confidence
Elegance has a way of pouring out of Miriam Miller. Her arms open like wings, her fingertips part like petals. At 5 foot 10, with long legs and an elastic back, she has the kind of line that goes on for days.
But a body isn't everything in ballet. What makes Miller so striking isn't what you see but what you instinctively feel: her aura. Resolute yet plush, her presence has a quiet command and, within that, an almost casual confidence.
At New York City Ballet, where she was recently promoted to principal dancer, Miller, 28, has that rare ability to dance onstage as if she were singing through the steps in an open meadow. 'I don't love doing ballets that are performative to the audience,' she said. 'I like it when it's more internal, and it's the audience looking in on you and seeing you approach and explore.'
Over the past couple of years she has become her own dancer — not Miller dancing someone else's part, but Miller being herself. On Thursday, she makes her debut in the dual role of Odette-Odile in 'Swan Lake,' with Chun Wai Chan as her Siegfried. The weight of carrying this ballet, for any dancer, is both a technical and emotional feat. Timing is everything. Miller's consistency has caught up to her beauty. And she is a swan.
Miller has danced with City Ballet for 10 years, beginning with an apprenticeship that just months in saw her making a debut as Titania in George Balanchine's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' Even at a company like City Ballet where debuts come out of nowhere, this was a shock. Just who was this willowy blond from Iowa City, Iowa? She was young and her performance wasn't perfect, but her radiance and command of the stage were obvious.
Over the years, her renditions of the Siren in 'Prodigal Son' and the Stripper in 'Slaughter on Tenth Avenue' have cemented her ability to use her glamour with steely calculation or with humor. In more exposed roles — in 'Agon' and in ballets by Pam Tanowitz — she possesses an understated, lucid vibrancy. 'When I feel completely confident in what I'm doing and secure in myself within the role,' she said, 'it allows me to go out there without being in my head, without second-guessing how I'm being perceived. I'm just able to dance freely'
But there was something else: Life happened. Recently Miller got married and relocated to Westchester County from the Upper West Side. She recently got a bachelor's degree from Fordham University, majoring in anthropology with a minor in sociology. She found her identity outside of the company, outside of ballet.
Earlier this season, after her second show of Balanchine's 'Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir,' Miller was promoted to principal. Jonathan Stafford, the company's artistic director, told her that the plan had been to promote her after 'Swan Lake,' but the decision was made to do it before. He didn't want her, she said, to worry about anything.
For years Miller saw 'Swan Lake' as being unattainable. 'I used to think that there's no way I would ever be able to get through the whole ballet or to be able to master those steps,' she said. 'I surprised myself because there's nothing in it that I can't do. I love to tell a story onstage, and I love to have a character to embody, but in my own way.'
To her, simple is better. She's focusing on not overdoing the emotion. 'It's not needed for either role, Odette or Odile,' Miller said. 'It can get a little tacky.'
That is one thing she has never been. Before her promotion to principal, and before she learned she'd be dancing 'Swan Lake,' she was in a good place. She was dancing — and dancing true to herself. She felt respected by her peers and her superiors. And as her debut this season in Balanchine's 'Concerto Barocco' attested, she was performing with a certain beaming joy.
'You never know how you're going to feel until you're doing it, and then you're like, Oh wow,' she said. 'You don't really think, How am I going to hold my expression? Am I going to smile? With 'Barocco,' I just was smiling the whole time.'
She wasn't thinking about being promoted. 'I felt supported,' she said. 'And that's what mattered to me: If I had good relationships, if I still enjoyed being in the studio with everyone.'
Miller is poised and smart. She has a serious work ethic. And she's not prone to sentimentality. When she was promoted, she said, she was happy and surprised but not exactly bawling her eyes out. 'It's not like I was focusing everything on it,' she said.
But driving to work the next morning, she remembered a wish she had made at 15, a wish that she would some day become a principal dancer. Finally, she started to cry.
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