Choreographer, Cultural Ambassador, Healer, Professor, Mother, and Performing Artist, Michelle N. Gibson, also affectionately known as Mz. G, received her BFA in Dance from Tulane University and her MFA from Hollins University/American Dance Festival at Duke University. Gibson’s teaching and chorographic practice comprises all genres of the African Diaspora, Contemporary Afro Modern, Afro Funk, Jazz, and her own New Orleans Second Line Aesthetic. Her current projects involve sharing her aesthetic and New Orleans culture through a series of workshops she’s coined “The New Orleans Original BuckShop LLC”. Gibson has created a number of original works, including “Takin’ it To The Roots”, a work supported by the National Performance Network/Visual Artists Network’s Creation Fund, “Displaced Yet Rebirth” performed by Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Origins of Life on Earth with the Ashe’ Cultural Arts Center, and “Voices of Congo Square”, a work focused on the rich culture and history of the Black New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians. This work premiered in 2018 at the Black Dance USA conference at the Sun Theatre in St Louis, Missouri, and the Orpheum Theater in New Orleans.
In 2021 and 2022, Gibson curated Culture, Brass, and Jazz in the Park Festival as a partnership between The New Orleans Original BuckShop and ArtsBridge Powered by Toyota, a community arts program of the AT&T Performing Arts Center. In the summer of 2022, Michelle N. Gibson was invited to be Grand Marshal for the Ascona Jazz Festival in Switzerland where she led Second Line parades with the community and conducted teaching workshops. Gibson also was honored, as an alumnus, to be a part of the esteemed Jacob’s Pillow 90th Anniversary Season performing her one-woman show “Taken’ It To The Roots”. The performance was accompanied by NOJO 7, the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, Jawara Simon, and Alexandro Perez and garnered her a feature article in the New York Times.
In addition to being a 13-year faculty member with the American Dance Festival, Gibson also served on the dance faculty at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas for four years. Currently, she serves as a Visiting Professor of Practice in Dance at Southern Methodist University.
@mgibson4life
@theoriginalbuckshop
FB: Michelle N. Gibson the Artist
Photo by Tyana Moore