Gibney’s Learning & Leadership programs weave artistry, activism, and leadership into group experiences designed to meet the evolving needs of dance artists.

Facilitated by members of the Gibney staff and community, students come away with a new understanding of leadership, community, and career-building.

All built around the Gibney ethos, we welcome student groups for experiences at our Lower Manhattan location through NYC Group Visits. Our director, Amy Miller, travels across the country to activate our Learning on Location opportunities with students and educators alike, and we develop Yearlong Learning collaborations with academic institutions toward deeper exchange. All programs are offered in-person or online and are 100% customizable to suit your educational and budget goals.

Supplement your curriculum with access to the highest quality of teaching excellence in a range of contexts: 

• Movement classes 
• Artist discussions
• Professional development workshops
• New creation residencies
• Student showings/performances
• Receptions with alumni, donor and industry professionals 

Gibney is uniquely positioned to offer professional development experiences for students with CEO & Artistic Director Gina Gibney, our resident Gibney Company Artistic Associates, the Gibney staff and an expansive network of NYC-based working artists and entrepreneurs.

For more information, fill out our L&L Inquiry Form or email Sam Baker, Gibney’s Director of Education at sam@gibneydance.org.

“As we are all lifelong learners embodying roles that cycle between student and teacher, how can we all build ‘leadership’ skills that more deeply value both expressing and listening? This is leadership – this is followership – this is the moving forward and moving back of the ‘new choreography’ in front of us all.”

– Amy Miller, Creative Director of Learning & Leadership

Hybrid Approach to Artistry, Leadership and Social Action across Learning & Leadership Programs

Inspired by 25 years of working alongside survivors of gender-based violence with a trauma-informed approach, Gibney has enlivened its overall sensibility to education across our platforms as opportunities to weave artistry/innovation and social action together. Our vision is to work toward a ‘new fabric’ that prioritizes both priorities in equal measure no matter the context. We work to expand the definition of our ‘community’ to include those we engage with every day and leadership as rooted in awareness of the self.

With over 30 years of experience in the field as a dancer, educator, choreographer, and community builder, Director of Learning & Leadership, Amy Miller, champions a shared mission of weaving together artistry, social action, and leadership skills into holistic programming. Having joined the Gibney organization in 2011, Miller brings with her institutional knowledge across all three aspects of the organization: Company, Center and Community Action. With 12 years of experience as a performing member of our resident Gibney Company, and 9 years in a supportive Gibney Company directorship role alongside Gina Gibney and Nigel Campbell, Miller also brings with her 12 years of experience addressing gender-based violence through deep work alongside Senior Director of Community Action, Yasemin Ozumerzifon, social workers from our partner organizations and communities of survivors both here in NYC and abroad. Over two decades ago, Gina Gibney and team braided the tenets of creative process in the studio to addressing needs in the recovery of abuse to arrive at Gibney’s Community Action Model: Look Inside (reflection), Speak through Movement (expression), Work Together (collaboration) and Take Care (sustainability). 

Trauma-informed approaches to leadership, facilitation and holding space for each other are not reserved for a specific workshop or space as they benefit us all. Building on years of training and facilitating movement experiences within this trauma-informed approach, the mission of Gibney’s Learning & Leadership Group Programs is to offer ‘windows in’ on this hybrid approach of weaving artistry/innovation and social action together and out of their respective buckets. Our vision is to work toward a ‘new fabric’ that prioritizes both priorities in equal measure across all contexts of the field. What do artistry/leadership/social action share in common? How are we practicing each of these in the studio, stage, office, our relationships, our greater community?  

As we strive to find the balance of precedent and innovation in our dance education platforms, pinpointing what has worked before as well as what we need to shift for greater equity needs thoughtful untangling. We start with a definition of leadership that begins with internal reflection of knowing the self, moves toward external expression by taking action, then listening and braiding ideas through collaboration, and moving toward care and sustainability that cycle back toward the self as regenerative fuel to start the circulation anew.