Milling completed her Ph.D. in dance at Texas Woman’s University. During her doctoral studies at TWU, she began an M.A. in women’s studies, which she finished in 2008.
While completing her graduate work at TWU, Milling designed and taught face-to-face and online courses in the Department of Dance and Women’s Studies Program. Throughout her career, she has taught in a wide variety of artistic and educational environments. She has worked as a teaching artist and full-time dance educator with the New York City Board of Education, as a part-time lecturer at Texas Christian University, and as an adjunct at the University of North Texas. In addition, she also has been a company teacher for Dallas Black Dance Theatre I and II and a guest artist for the Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Minnesota Conservatory for the Arts, and at the Making Waves Dance Festival. In 2004, Milling was awarded for her excellence in teaching by TWU's Department of Dance, and in 2007 she was one of eight graduate students in the U.S. to receive the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award by the American Association of Colleges and Universities.
As a performer, choreographer and scholar, Milling enjoys combining her interests in feminist oral histories, social justice issues, dance making, and writing as a means to explore the possibilities between different ways of knowing, perceiving, and articulating identity-based realities. Her creative and scholarly work has been presented at the Joyce Soho, the D.U.M.B.O. Dance Festival in Brooklyn, N.Y., the Barefoot Brigade in Dallas, Texas, the Annual Conference for the National Dance Education Organization, and in the Journal of Dance Education.
Milling began her formal dance training in high school at the Walnut Hill School for the Performing and Visual Arts, where she graduated with honors in dance. In conjunction with the Walnut Hill School, she studied at the Boston Ballet School, and her summers were spent studying at the Houston Ballet Academy and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. She has performed as a company member and guest artist with ballet and modern dance companies such as the Dayton Ballet, Berkshire Ballet, Tressor Dance Company, Contemporary Dance Fort Worth, the Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, and the Von Howard Project as well as others. She also has performed and assumed the role of dance captain for the Radio City Christmas Spectacular in Los Angeles, Calif., and Myrtle Beach, S.C.
In Texas, Milling served on the major grant panel for the Arts Council of Fort Worth and Tarrant County. She currently is president-elect of the South Carolina Dance Association and sits on the Advisory Council for the South Carolina Dance Education Organization.