New York choreographer Bebe Miller created "Blessed" 11 years ago for her own dance company. For two weeks in January, Miller and assistant Sarah Gamblin reconstructed the work for nine University of Hawai'i dance students, who will perform it as part of the concert "Dances From the Heart/ Land" at Kennedy Theatre.

Miller resists overt storytelling and says that ever since the 1970s, when she pursued graduate studies in dance at Ohio State University, she has not always gone with the flow.

"Blessed" is set to gospel music, but the chorus is sung by a white gospel group from Australia. Although Miller works closely with the music, there is no sense of interpreting the words or forcing a narrative flow.

"I think I began from, and still work from, a point of curiosity," Miller said. "The dance is noninterpretive but a parallel experience. You'll hear the music and see the dance and make up your own interpretation. I'm not interested in dictating the experience. The dynamic effect from the music is infectious. In a way, it's alchemical."

Her advice to audience members: "Relax, observe and see where that takes you and where it takes the dancers. Allow the impression to override the analytical. Observe how the dancers are listening to the music, the dynamic between them. Watch the space arrange itself."

MOTHER'S KEY ROLE

Miller, a professor of dance at Ohio State, is vivacious and eloquent.

"The story began with my mother," she said before a rehearsal. "She wanted to find affordable dance classes for herself and her children. Fortunately we lived close to the Henry Street Playhouse (in New York City, home to the Alwin Nikolais Dance Company at the time). I started taking composition classes every Saturday with Murray Louis (one of Nikolais' lead dancers) when I was 3, until I stopped at age 12.

"I didn't know that not everybody danced."

During her teens, Miller stopped dancing completely. Then, while a student at Erlham, a small liberal arts college in the Midwest, she rediscovered her interest through a master class taught by Merce Cunningham. After graduation, she returned to New York and resumed studying with members of the Nikolais company. Soon afterward, however, she began graduate studies at Ohio State.

It was the 1970s, and political trends were very much a consideration. Most black American modern dancers of that time were working with Alvin Ailey or Martha Graham — both of whom created narrative, dramatic dances.

But Miller said she wasn't always in step with outside forces.

"As an African-American, doing abstract modern dance was unusual, but I didn't realize that," Miller said. "Line, shape and dynamics was my world. I didn't know it was unpolitical in some people's eyes."

Miller adds, somewhat wryly, "Who gets to do what dance had become an issue."

A 20TH ANNIVERSARY

After receiving a master's degree from Ohio State in 1975, Miller returned to New York once again and began performing with various modern dance groups, including those of Nina Wiener and Lynn Dally. She also began choreographing her own work.

By the mid-1980s, she found it possible to get an agent and grants.

Although she accepted an offer to teach full time at Ohio State in 2000, her company continues and celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. Miller now enjoys the best of both performing and academic worlds.

Miller's interest, in watching or creating dance, is to find a "soulfulness" inherent to the movement.

Audiences at UH-Manoa's dance concert this year will have a chance to judge for themselves.