Meet Amy

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Amy Miller is a NYC-based facilitator, ACC-level certified coach, educator and mediator. She leads individuals and groups on critical issues and practices of facilitation, equity, inclusion, trust-building and repair, nervous system regulation, productive disequilibrium, conflict regulation, leadership, followership, movement, flow, artistry, and liberation.

Amy co-created and now consults with the Learning & Leadership initiative at the arts and social action organization Gibney. At Gibney, Amy served as a Director of the contemporary dance company, taught leadership and choreographed works at dozens of universities, and developed and facilitated workshops with social workers, survivors of gender-based violence, and youth addressing issues of agency, liberation, witnessing and healthy relationships.

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As an educator, she has worked as an adjunct professor at Bard College, Hunter College, Marymount Manhattan College, NYU Tisch, and Purchase College, and an artist-in-residence at institutions including the Amahoro Dance Project (Rwanda), Bates Dance Festival (Maine), Brigham Young University (Utah), Brown University (Rhode Island), the University of Cape Town (South Africa), DOCH (Sweden), Earl Mosley Institute for the Arts (NYC), Jacksonville University, Kinder HSPVA (Texas), Mimar Sinan University (Türkiye), MUDA Africa (Tanzania), Oberlin College (Ohio), Ohio University, Principia College (Illinois), Radford University (Virginia), Texas Christian University, Utah Valley University, Wayne State University (Detroit), and many others.

Amy has been a professional contemporary dance artist for 35 years. She started with the Ohio Ballet at age 15, later co-founded Cleveland's GroundWorks DanceTheater with David Shimotakahara and led multiple premieres with Gibney Dance Company, among others. She is a founding cast member and is currently touring with Tony Award-winning choreographer Sonya Tayeh's new work, The Surge; An Ode to Sinéad O'Connor.

Photo by Tanya Kulesh

~ Nervous System-Informed ~ Neuro-Affirming ~ Somatics-Oriented ~

I support clients toward deeper agency in decision-making by framing contradictions as unexpected messengers and sources of regenerative action. By working to legitimize and activate our own strengths and desires, we ‘soften the shoulds’ and resist the notion that there's just ‘one right way.' This approach offers tools to take many factors/voices into consideration and still make clear decisions to move forward. We untangle the complexity and move through ambivalence with courage toward a continuously iterative and embodied way of life.

~ Facilitating the emergence of potential in groups and individuals, including myself ~

~ Our bright ideas and best intentions only get us so far ~

~ We get stuck, but can respond with curiosity ~

~ Listen to our bodies ~

~ Appreciate conflict while reducing harm ~

~ Use disequilibrium to find flow ~

~ Build capacity for Both/And (which does include Either/Or when most helpful) ~

The 'Virtuosity of When' Framework

We often have more choices than we think we do in our decision-making.

Flow State

Conflict Regulation

Difference can be embraced as a generative force of new information.

Hero's Journey

The waterwheel of regenerative cycles across life's phases.

These three concepts above can support us in leveraging paradox and contradictions through my 'Virtuosity of When' framework. Tapping into our need for structure and openness in different ratios across time and contexts, these themes are the basis of my ongoing work within myself and all of my offerings

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Links & Resources

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Learning and Leadership Group Programs - Promotional Video (2022)

Dance pro Amy Miller comes full circle with Gibney, Akron Beacon- Journal (Oct. 2, 2022)

Cultivating Spaces For Feeling Like One’s Self, Inside the Dancer’s Studio podcast (2021)

Choreographers Amy Miller/Bryan Arias on Their Gibney Split Bill (2018)

Persist Persist, Solo choreographic work, The Public Theater NYC (2017)

Vibrating Along With Live Music, NY Times (Nov. 18, 2013)

Photo by Tanya Kulesh

Relentless Gratitude...

My work and perspectives are deeply buoyed and influenced by having gratefully traveled beside these incredible humans and organizations below over many years.

Deep appreciation to personal support from Kathy Kasper, Aaron Marr Page, Joshua Nolan, Yasemin Ozumerzifon, Beth Silverman Yam, Diane Klann, Leah O’Donnell, Sonya Tayeh, David Shimotakahara, Kara Gilmour, Susan Epstein and Gina Gibney, as well as hundreds of teachers, collaborators, students, survivors, social workers, activists and artists I’ve been honored to move alongside.

My thinking and embodied awareness have been intimately shaped and reshaped by Grace Lee Boggs, adrienne maree brown, Octavia Butler, Joseph Campbell, Dana Caspersen, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Barbara Dilley, Judith Herman, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Audre Lorde, Lois Mojica, Amanda Ripley, Richard Rohr, Margaret Wheatley, and David Whyte.

I’ve adapted techniques and philosophies learned from Adaptive Leadership, Gibney’s Community Action, the International Coaching Group, the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, Somatic Experiencing and the Strozzi Institute.