Lesbian-led Gibney Company opens TITAS’ season with first Dallas appearance

Gina Gibney Company

Dance debut

Lesbian-led Gibney Company opens TITAS’ season with first Dallas appearance

RICH LOPEZ | Staff writer
rich@dallasvoice.com

For Gina Gibney, bringing her New York-based company to debut in Dallas is an exciting move. With a recent donor gift, she and the entire Gibney Company have been able to reshape the company not only as an arts company but as an organization. Part of that is hitting the road and introducing the Gibney Company to more dance fans.

“This is really an incredible moment for us,” Gibney said by phone. Whether she meant in general or the Dallas debut specifically — still, no truer words.

The Gibney Company opens TITAS/DANCEUNBOUND’s new 30th season this weekend at the Moody Performance Hall in Dallas Arts District.

Gibney founded the company in 1991 to build an organization around her own artistic endeavors. In New York, she wanted to find a way to put her voice as a dancer and choreographer among a plethora of dance and arts organizations. Today, it’s fair to say her team has carved its own space.

“I never expected to have a company this size. This has surpassed any vision I ever had in the most positive ways,” she said.

A huge part of that was a recent gift of $2 million to the company which allowed the company to expand in 2020.Technically, the donation — which came from Andrew A. Davis, a trustee of the Shelby Cullom Davis Charitable Fund — was given just before the pandemic started. But the company couldn’t do anything with it until later. That also gave Gibney herself a bit of freedom to think creatively with the organization, since there was no conditions on how the company could proceed with that kind of gift.

“Aside from the faith he had in me, he allowed me to flesh out the vision of the company. There are no second guesses of our choices, and I think it all really lit the torch for us to move forward,” Gibney said.

The organization grew and received a slew of performance opportunities, and the company now has 23 studios in its facilities. Quite a long way for the out dancer to have come since 1991.

In New York, any and everything seems possible, but it was stunning to learn that Gibney is the only lesbian-led company in the Big Apple. Additionally, she hasn’t had the easiest path despite the idea of how open the New York arts community seemed it would be.

“As an openly gay woman, it wasn’t necessarily easy. I think I found acceptance in my profession, but for a while, the dance world didn’t feel like a fertile place for a gay woman,” she said.

But Gibney turned that into a positive by creating an organization that wasn’t just a dance company but one that spoke to issues of civil justice and advocacy.

“I had to work against that, so in my gender-based work, based in my own feminism or gender, there is a personal advocacy through the work,” she said. “I didn’t consciously go into the arts to combine them, but being completely engaged in my own life with social action, feminine and gender advocacy, it seemed natural to insert that into my work.”

All that wraps up into an inspiring package that heads to Dallas this weekend. And while Gibney may certainly represent the community with her name on the company, she noted that the piece “Oh Courage,” which will be part of the program, was choreographed by the openly-queer and Tony-winning Sonya Tayeh.

“I think we’re really bringing that representation to Dallas, but this is such an opportunity to learn and how Dallas will respond as we watch alongside them,” Gibney said.