Nicki Miller
Interdisciplinary Art & Movement Medicine
Writing, speaking, & Press archivE
MFA Thesis
“Environmental Relations as Communication: On Diversifying Aesthetics in Aerial Arts” (2024)
Abstract:
Although aerial arts are typically relegated to performance, analysis, critique, and study within the niche of the Western circus sector, “Environmental Relations and Communication: On Diversifying Aesthetics in Aerial Arts'' offers pathways for understanding aerial arts through a variety of practical, aesthetic, and non-circus lenses. Applying frameworks of transdisciplinarity, ecodramaturgy, and disability studies enables aerial arts to be practiced and artistically engaged by the many kinds of artists, bodies, and environments that do not adhere to or fit within the rigid formal structures of Western circus. This paper outlines the historical roots that have led to the conflation of aerial arts and circus and then shifts its focus to diverge from these roots and unpack methodologies and artist examples that expand the relational, physical, and artistic functions of aerial arts in practice and performance.
original WRITING: Performance Reviews
REVIEW: Circa En Masse at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival (November 2019)
REVIEW: Hot Brown Honey at NYU Skirball Center for Performing Arts (April 2019)
REVIEW: Circus Krone Mandana in Munich, Germany (April 2019)
REVIEW: Recirquel Non Solus at Brooklyn Academy of Music (February 2019)
original WRITING: ARTICLES & OPINION PIECES
ARTICLE from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters : “Saying No in a Culture of Yes: Artists Building a Code of Ethics in the #MeToo Era” (January 2019)
ARTICLE examining structures for Performing Arts Funding and Education “What Makes Performing Arts Possible Part One” (October 2017)
INTERVIEWS & PANEL DISCUSSIONS
PANEL DISCUSSION: Is Circus OK? Urgent Concerns Revisited–One Year into COVID (Panelist, March 2021)
PANEL DISCUSSION: Circus and Changing Realities 2020–Imagining New Infrastructure for Circus (Moderator, April 2020)
PANEL DISCUSSION: American Contemporary Circus in NYC & Philadelphia (Panelist, October 2019)
VIDEO INTERVIEW Transcending Boundaries–A Video Interview with Tilde Björfors of Circus Cirkör (Interviewer, November 2018)