Creativity Mentor
Letter of Recommendation for Pattie Miles
To Whom It May Concern:
As a director, Pattie gives performers courage. Experimentation in rehearsals is serious and intense and there is a high degree of integrity and creative excellence but always a sense of playfulness. The climate is unfettered by ego and judgment. Pattie has a sense of serious play and humor is quick at hand. There’s a lot of flexibility and lack of imposition of her will until the point that it is necessary to move the project forward. Her decisiveness always feels like it is serving the greater cause of the piece and that’s what gives me trust in Pattie as a theatre maker.
I have a BFA from Julliard in Dance and performed with Joffrey Ballet School and David Parsons. I transitioned into modern performance after being mentored by Martha Hill, Meredith Monk, and Barbara Dilley. Currently I am practicing a combination of Butoh and interdisciplinary performance work with my own company in Port Townsend.
I have never met anyone who wasn’t a professional dancer who has Pattie’s kinesthetic awareness and sensitivity to understanding rhythmic language and how forms communicate non-verbal messages through spatial relationships. Pattie is brilliant at recognizing patterns. She knows what ideas; both verbal and non-verbal are being communicated to the audience.
As a performer, Pattie is a dynamic combination of somatic adeptness and talent. As an improviser she responds spontaneously in the moment in a multitude of performance and theatrical situations. Pattie’s professional background has trained her to integrate information and influences with ease.
As a writer, Pattie has a working relationship with her daydreams and fantasy life. All of her self-produced plays are an example of entertaining the fantastic. She wouldn’t be able to access original characters and interesting dynamics if she didn’t have an observant and fertile imagination. Pattie’s work isn’t about duplicating something it is about true inquiry. She alternates between divergent and convergent thinking.
Many people talk about being a life long learner – Pattie actually does it. An icon of self-motivation, she is devoted to her art and is aware of and curious about what other professionals are doing. Rather than guarding her image as an “expert” she keeps taking classes and workshops.
Pattie's genius as an instructor is that she opens a corridor of doors for students (and always seem to have the key to a few more) but allows the choice and risk to be yours...autonomy that leads to actual integration and capability...the real gifts of a master teacher.
Sincerely,
Camille Hildebrandt