Gibney Dance Center Announces Major Expansion
May 19, 2011
Exciting news from Gibney Dance Center! This is certainly a wonderful addition to the dance community. Below are excerpts from the press release:
Gina Gibney, artistic director of Gibney Dance, is pleased to announce the expansion of the Gibney Dance Center (GDC) in the historic performing arts building at 890 Broadway in New York City. This added space will be a tremendous asset to the arts community, making high quality, affordable space more broadly available and accessible.
In 1991, Gibney operated a single studio at 890 Broadway as a home base for her company and the dance community, and she officially launched the Gibney Dance Center in 2010 when she acquired two additional spacious studios. GDC is now adding 8,400 square feet of pillar-free space scheduled for a grand opening in July 2011. This new expansion will house four additional studios, including one extra-large 70′ x 45′ space, all of which will be available for rehearsals, showings and special programs. The expanded facility will also provide a green room, dressing rooms, storage rooms, production offices, a media room and new office space. The additional facilities will support the role of GDC as a creative hub for dance artists and as a home base for Gibney Dance.
GDC’s expansion has been made possible with generous support from Eliot Feld’s Ballet Tech, the Board of Directors and Honorary Board of Directors of Gibney Dance, and the Jerome Robbins Foundation.
Time to Talk: Space Needs of NYC Dance Artists
November 18, 2010
On Monday, November 22nd at 6:30 PM, Gibney Dance Center is hosting Space Needs of NYC Dance Artists, a discussion co-facilitated by choreographer Gina Gibney and arts critic Eva Yaa Asantewaa. The discussion will be framed around a series of questions:
What critical resources are not being offered by dance spaces at the present time?
What does the community need to meet its challenges?
What could the Gibney Dance Center offer that would be unique and innovative?
Ideas and input are welcome.
Time to Talk: Space Needs of NYC Dance Artists
Gibney Dance Center
Monday, November 22nd, 6:30-8:00 PM
890 Broadway, Fifth Floor – Studio 1
This event is free. RSVP at info (at) gibneydance (dot) org
Sorry I Missed Your Show!
July 27, 2010
Gibney Dance and Dance/NYC have jointly developed Sorry I Missed Your Show!, a series that serves as a second chance to view works by both emerging and established choreographers, as well as a forum for artists and their audiences to revisit them from fresh perspectives. Video screenings will be followed by thoughtful discussions and reconsiderations led by some of the great minds of the contemporary dance world.
Sorry I Missed Your Show! continues on Wednesday, July 28th at 6:30 PM with PLATFORMS 2010: Highlights of Danspace Project‘s innovative inaugural series including i get lost, curated by choreographer and multi-media artist Ralph Lemon, and Back to New York City, curated by choreographer and performer Juliette Mapp.
The evening concludes with a close-up conversation with Judy Hussie-Taylor, Danspace Project’s Executive Director and creator of the PLATFORMS series, as well as Danspace’s Choreographic Center Without Walls (CW2).
The event is free. RSVP by registering online.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 from 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM. Gibney Studios is located at 890 Broadway, between East 19th and 20th, 5th floor.
Gibney Dance: View Partially Obstructed
October 15, 2009
How do we come to terms with knowing so little? Gina Gibney poses this question in her newest work for Gibney Dance, View Partially Obstructed, which premiered at Baryshnikov Arts Center on Tuesday evening. The hour-long piece explores the subjective nature of perception and the fact that we can never see or feel everything. In spite of having incomplete or distorted information, we shape our understanding of ourselves and others based on what we know.
View Partially Obstructed features a brooding score by Ryan Lott, with a mix of delicate piano and electronics, and a sleek set design by Lex Liang that allows the piece’s five dancers to move transparent, rectangular panels along a suspended grid. Live animation by Joshue Ott/superDraw creates projections that echo and interact with the dancers’ fluid partnering, meditative pauses, and curving limbs. The movement, music, design, and animation combine to create a viewing experience that is deeply personal. Without fully understanding the creative process for Gibney, the performers, and the collaborators, the audience can choose what to watch and how to interpret it. Where one viewer might find something meaningful, another might feel unaffected. It’s all a matter of perception.
Gibney Dance performs View Partially Obstructed through Saturday, October 17th, 8 PM, at Baryshnikov Arts Center: 450 West 37th Street. On Friday evening, there will be a post-performance Q&A and reception. Tickets can be ordered through SmartTix or by calling 212.868.4444. General admission is $20. Seniors, students, and dancers can obtain $15 tickets with the discount code “DANCE” through SmartTix.
Dancers Choreograph for NYU Tisch Showing
June 17, 2009
Kyle Abraham
On Tuesday evening, I attended a showing of work by six dancers whose companies are currently in residence at the NYU Tisch Dance Summer Residency Festival. The performance provided the dancers – who are members of David Dorfman Dance, Ellis Wood Dance, Gina Gibney Dance, Keigwin + Company, and Martha Graham Dance Company – the opportunity to show their choreographic skills and present their work to Tisch’s summer students and the public.
It was an eclectic program (not surprising, considering the choreographers’ disparate styles) with varied results. Strong dancers are not necessarily strong choreographers, but a solo choreographed and performed by Kyle Abraham of David Dorfman Dance proved that this elegant dancer is an exception. The delicate chords of Chopin shifted to Kid Cudi’s hip hop beats as Abraham grappled with conflicting internal forces. Meditative and cautious in one moment and suddenly frenetic and expansive in the next, Abraham was gorgeously fluid and articulate, quivering with unbounded emotion. He’s definitely a dancer and choreographer to watch.
Other notable pieces were False Start by Josh Palmer (of Gina Gibney Dance) and Jennifer Phillips’ Moth. The former was an intimate waltz for two women set to a melancholy song by Iron and Wine. It conveyed all the heartache and gloom of two people growing apart. Phillips, who is a dancer and rehearsal director for Ellis Wood Dance, stared menacingly at the audience as her limbs flailed and torso undulated in Moth. The angular tilt of an arm or leg offset her swirling, circular patterns. Phillips has an intense presence, and with a bit more excavation and development this work in progress will surely be fierce.
