I Heart Gibney Interview with Kevin Gotkin
A Celebration of all things Gibney, I <3 Gibney is our annual performance showcase, presenting works by Gibney’s vibrant community of staff, renters, teachers, colleagues, and supporters.
Senior Curatorial Director Eva Yaa Asantewaa sat down with the presenting artists and hosts to hear more about how dance is a form of love. Below is her interview with Gibney’s 2019 Moving Toward Justice Cohort Member, Kevin Gotkin.
Get your tickets for I <3 Gibney on February 11, 2020 at The Theater at Gibney 280 Broadway.
Eva Yaa Asantewaa: Who is your most loved dance ancestor?
Kevin Gotkin: Lisa Bufano, a disabled interdisciplinary artist well-regarded for her work in dance, performance, doll-making and animation. The first time I saw her work, she was using Queen Anne-style table legs as prosthetics that created stunningly novel aesthetics and animacies. I love the way her work attends to the exquisite specificity of disabled bodies and draws on so many forms of artistry at once.
EYA: What do you love most about dance?
KG: I love that dance allows us to use bodies and movement as texts. So much of our world is designed around texts as written and spoken communication. Dance lets us ask: “What can we do without having to say anything?”
EYA: How is dance a form of love?
KG: I love social dancing, the dancing we do spontaneously. Making space for dance means allowing people to come into their body, to express a feeling that can’t quite be captured any other way. Dance is love when it’s a way to become.
EYA: What do you think could help more people love dance?
KG: We could encourage people to free themselves of the obligation to have something to say about dance. Who needs a blunt transfer between such different modes of expression? Dance can be what we feel in our bodies.
EYA: What do you love about Gibney?
KG: I love that Gibney is making space for disability artistry!
Photo of Kevin Gotkin by Mengwen Cao.