The Theatre and Dance Department and Newcomb Dance Company are proud to welcome the esteemed Nora Gibson to Tulane University! We look forward to working with her in our spring semester with the Newcomb Dance Company performance culminating at the end our studies with the renowned choreographer.
Nora Gibson
Overview: Gibson facilitates research-creation around the body-mind, selfhood, and conscious experience through immersive/interactive installation, choreography, sound installation, bio-reactive video light installation, and full dome projection. Her work in new media has been presented by Istanbul Digital Art Festival, Jacob's Pillow, (US), MUTEK (CA), Ars Electronica (AUT), the Society for Art & Technology (CA) the Fels Planetarium (US), Contemporary & Digital Art Fair("CADAF") (NYC), Urban Screens Production (AUS), and The Hexagram Network (CA), . Her work has been further supported through an internship with the BIAPT neuroscience lab at McGill University. She teaches at the intersect of performance & technology as well as ballet, composition, improvisation, dance for camera, and research-creation practices.
Gibson is a devoted teacher, and has designed courses in Embodied Approaches to Research-Creation, Introduction to Digital Art and New Media, as well as an Introductory Workshop in TouchDesigner for Movement Artists. She has taught ballet, pointe, physical theater, and composition in the US and abroad, including Temple University, University of the Arts, the Zawirowania Festival, and many other institutions. Her work as a ballet teacher at Temple University garnered her the Outstanding Teaching award in 2018. She has also taught ballet and pointe classes privately at the Philadelphia Studio ballet for ages 8-18, and served as ballet mistress to Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers.
As the director of Nora Gibson Contemporary Ballet, a contemporary ballet company based in Philadelphia for a decade, Gibson's choreography was presented by New Dance Alliance at Joyce SOHO, at Dance Place in Washington DC, Philadelphia Dance Projects, The Williams Center for the Arts, and by the Franklin Institute, one of the oldest and most prestigious science and technology museums in the US. Her work has received consistent critical acclaim, heralded by the Philadelphia Inquirer as "the most authoritative work in Philadelphia. . ." Gibson’s innovative approach to ballet garnered her an invitation to speak to an audience of programmers and visual artists at the TouchDesigner summit at MUTEK in Montreal in 2018 about the making of her dome ballet, MANDALA. Gibson's choreographic work has been commissioned regularly by universities such as Tulane University, Bryn Mawr College, Alma College, and University of the Arts.
Gibson trained in ballet at Baltimore School for the Arts under Sylvester Campbell of the Dutch National Ballet, and earned a BFA in dance from Tisch, at NYU. Gibson performed from 2010-2013 with Lucinda Childs in various iconic 70s works as part of the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage's Virtual Reconstruction project. As a choreographer, Gibson has been invited as a resident artist in the US and abroad, including the nEW Festival in Philadelphia (2009-10), the CEC New Edge Residency (2009-10), the Ellen Forman Memorial Award (2011), the PHL/Poland Artist Exchange Residency (2012), the Choreographers on Campus Residency, funded through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2014), Diepenheim Werkplaats (2016), Kaatsbaan (2017), and The Dance Visions Residency (2018). She earned an M.F.A. in Intermedia from Concordia University in Montreal.
For more information on upcoming performances, please visit our Performances page.