BOAT

World Premiere | The Kimmel Center, 2016

BOAT was created in response to the global refugee crisis, an evocative work that explores what it looks like, feels like, and means to be searching for home. The work takes viewers on a journey of people becoming undone, floating adrift, holding each other, building bonds, and allowing hope and dignity to grow anew. BOAT can be performed to live accompaniment to the music of Arvo Pärt.

“The choreography of Andrea Miller is extraordinary. You saw how humans are really built to interlock. We may be separate entities as a species, individually, but we are built to commune, and it made one thing that love of neighbor really means love of proximate stranger and if that's the common injunction in the three monotheistic faiths the representation through dance I think just proves that point."
- Zeid Raad Al Hussein, Former UN High Commissioner of Human Rights

BOAT was performed for the UN Refugee Agency and adapted into a feature film in 2020.

PRESS

"Miller's torrent of perpetual motion is both eloquent and harrowing in depicting the plight of refugees trying to escape to a better life or just attempting to survive."
(Philadelphia Dance)

The dancers’ tactile physicality and Miller’s architectural eye created the ideal transporting vessel for… BOAT, which examined ideas of support and dependency, while being sustained by the deep murmuring tones of the organ. The blend of the music coming to life through the dancers’ movements … made for a sensory feast.
(The Dance Enthusiast)