IN-PROCESS: GIBNEY COMPANY & LUCINDA CHILDS

Gibney Company, led by Artistic Director Gina Gibney and Company Director Gilbert T. Small II, commissions and performs works by renowned and emerging choreographers from New York and around the world who are committed to exploring connections between the rigorous, often superhuman physicality of contemporary dance alongside responsive, humanistic storytelling. Presenting a broad range of aesthetics and techniques, Gibney Company has an unrelenting focus on artistic excellence and social integrity.

Since its expansion in 2020, the Company has commissioned works from a wide range of choreographers including Rena Butler, Lucinda Childs, Peter Chu, William Forsythe, Emilie Leriche, Mthuthuzeli November, Alan Lucien Øyen, Gustavo Ramirez Sansano, Jermaine Spivey and Spenser Theberge, Sonya Tayeh, and Yue Yin, and performed works by Sharon Eyal, Johan Inger, Ohad Naharin and Twyla Tharp. Performances at prestigious festivals and venues include New York City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival, Fall for Dance North, Dance Victoria, Holland Dance Festival, Jacob’s Pillow, Global Arts Live, The Joyce Theater, Festival des arts de Saint-Sauveur, DANCECleveland, TITAS/DANCE UNBOUND, among many others.

Gibney Company’s model for a 21st-century dance company supports sustainable careers for dancers and healthy working relationships for artists and collaborators. The company members, known as Artistic Associates, advance the quality of the organization’s artistry through performance and deepen its community engagement through Moving Toward Justice Fellowships designed to address social issues and inequities in the dance field. Gibney received a 2025 Bessie Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance.

Gina Gibney (Founder, Artistic Director & CEO) is a nationally recognized artist, community builder, and organizational leader working at the intersection of dance and social action through artist-led institution building. Leading the Gibney organization, she has transformed a single studio into one of New York City’s most expansive and impactful arts organizations.

Today, Gibney operates through an integrated framework of Company, Community, and Center: a professional contemporary dance company; Community Action programs that connect movement and civic engagement; and two multidisciplinary arts centers comprising 23 studios that serve the broader performing arts field. Together, these areas advance a singular mission to harness the power of movement, creativity, and performance to catalyze social change and personal transformation.

As an Artistic Director, Gibney advances an artist-led model in which creative excellence, community partnership, and cultural infrastructure are mutually reinforcing. Under her leadership, the organization has pioneered new approaches to creative development, social engagement, and arts service, while building significant institutional capacity. Trained as a choreographer, her work was known for formal clarity and emotional depth and has been presented nationally and internationally. Her artistic practice continues to inform the organization’s values and direction.

Gibney has received numerous honors, including the Ernie Award for changemaking leadership from Dance/USA, the Floria V. Lasky Award, the Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, and the 2025 Bessie Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance awarded to the Gibney organization.

Gilbert T. Small II (Company Director) Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, Gilbert T. Small II (he/him) is an internationally recognized dancer, educator, and leader in contemporary dance. He joined Gibney in 2020 as Curatorial Director of Training & Rehearsal Director for Gibney Company, and in 2022 was promoted to Company Director, where he now advances the organization’s vision of artistic excellence, social integrity, and meaningful storytelling.

Gilbert’s formal training began at the Baltimore School for the Arts. He earned his BFA from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance in 2009, including a transformative study-abroad experience at Codarts in Rotterdam, which broadened his understanding of dance as a multifaceted art form. Prior to his leadership at Gibney, he spent ten years with Ballet British Columbia under the leadership of Emily Molnar, creating and performing works by choreographers such as William Forsythe, Ohad Naharin, Crystal Pite, Johan Inger, Medhi Walerski, Emily Molnar, and Cayetano Soto, among others. As a senior artist there, he also took on the role of Rehearsal Director for the company’s Fall 2017 season.

In addition to his leadership and performance career, Gilbert is deeply committed to mentorship and education. He serves as guest faculty for institutions internationally, cultivating relationships with both emerging and established artists, and fostering connections across diverse communities and demographics.

His leadership and artistic vision were recently recognized in Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” for 2025.

Lucinda Childs (choreographer), born in 1940, began her career at the Judson Dance Theater in New York in 1963. Since forming her dance company ten years later, she has created over fifty works, both solo and ensemble, and received numerous awards, including the Dance Magazine Award, The Golden Lion award from the Venice Biennale, and the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival award for lifetime achievement. In 1976, she was featured in the landmark avant-garde opera EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, for which she won an Obie Award. In 1979, Childs choreographed one of her most enduring works, DANCE, with music by Philip Glass and film décor by Sol LeWitt, which toured internationally and has been added to the repertory of the Lyon Opera Ballet. Since 1981, Childs has choreographed over thirty works for major ballet companies and directed and choreographed a number of contemporary and eighteenth-century operas for the Los Angeles Opera, for La Monnaie in Brussels, and for the Opera du Rhin, among others. Most recently, Childs directed and choreographed Philip Glass’s AHKNATEN for Nice Opera Cote D’Azur, which premiered in November 2021.