Filmmaker: Varvara Degtiarenko
UPCOMING EVENTS
UPCOMING EVENTS
July 11, 2026 at 5:30pm
Jacob’s Pillow | Henry J. Leir Stage
Photo by Abraham Felix
In this special outdoor performance as part of Pillow Pride weekend, BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance will present three artists sharing 15 minutes each of dance work, followed by a Q&A session. Audiences can enjoy a performance of “bury me in new orleans” by Imani Gaudin
“bury me in new orleans” is a meditative practice—a sharing of internal trials and tribulations that prods at questions of worthiness, love, and beauty. It begs the question: What is the acronym for love? L.O.V.E.
SELECTED PRESS .
SELECTED PRESS .
IMPRESSIONS: Experiments Abound — A Roundup of the 40th Performance Mix Festival
By Sarah Cecilia Bukowski of Dance Enthusiast
Photo by Elyse Mertz courtesy of New Dance Alliance
The four programs on Sunday, June 7th were dominated by solo and duo works. Solos leaned into the personal, with Ime Soul and Imani Gaudin offering deeply introspective, at times gutwrenching, glimpses into the weight of their lives as New York City artists: their intense loneliness, financial pressures, and creative struggles. The two channeled their stories through expressions of raw physicality and poignant text, with Gaudin’s poetic new york, please staged in a capsule of domesticity, while Soul’s gasping, recursive pleas in Scripts We Learn and Lines We Misremember built to a fever pitch of crisis to shape a larger social statement.
THE DANCE ENTHUSIAST ASKS: Inside Imani Gaudin’s Creative Universe and Her Latest Work “new york, please”
By Theo Boguszewski of Dance Enthusiast
Photo by Isabella Pagano
How do we give deeply of ourselves while still preserving our minds and bodies for a lifetime of art making? Self-care for artists is at the center of Imani Gaudin’s gaudanse, a New York–based organization rooted in accessibility, sustainability, and wellness. Gaudin creates work that blends movement, sound, storytelling, and experimental performance, and her latest work new york, please — to be shown at New Dance Alliance’s upcoming Performance Mix Festival — contemplates the need for self care against the backdrop of an addictive City that never stops pushing.
In conversation with The Dance Enthusiast’s Theo Boguszewski, Gaudin discusses the evolving creative universe she builds across disciplines, and her approach to performance as both a deeply personal practice and a communal act of care.
nanibu: World Premiere at the Marigny Opera House
Our Founding Artistic Director, Imani Gaudin, on FOX8/WVUE News
Photo by Leighann Kowalsky
nanibu is a dance-based play merging movement, text, sound, and immersive staging to explore tradition, love, and sacrifice. In the powerful kingdom of Nagaua, where love and peace reign, prosperity comes at a devastating cost. Forced to uphold this legacy, Nanibu must navigate grief, duty, and destiny, ascending the throne forever in mourning. nanibu allows audiences to reimagine what fantasy and mythical worlds look like when centered on Black bodies, challenging narratives of who belongs in epic storytelling. Check out the World Premiere of nanibu on April 18, 2025 at the Marigny Opera House in New Orleans, LA.
Imani Gaudin of Gaudanse: Profound stories via art and inclusion
By Emily Sarkissian of Dance Informa
Photo by Sinematic Studios
In 2020, Imani Gaudin founded Gaudanse, an organization of interdisciplinary artists ranging in form from dance, to film, to music, to visual arts, and even culinary arts. The collective is based both in New York City and New Orleans, and seeks to tell profound and impactful stories via art and inclusion. Dance Informa spoke with Gaudin to learn about the challenges of starting a small dance-based organization, the ways in which ideas and art come to her, and the desire to work in two cities.
— Emily Sarkissian
IMPRESSIONS: jakob&imani @ Hudson Yards
By Miranda Stuck for The Dance Enthusiast
Photo by ©davidplakkemedia
With support from the Hudson Yards Hell’s Kitchen Alliance, Baryshnikov Arts premiered jakob & imani, a performance art piece created by choreographer Imani Gaudin and visual artist Jakob Vitale. Exploring the symbiotic relationship between graffiti and contemporary dance, this site-specific work investigates how movement shapes the perceived meaning of graffiti art, and conversely, how the visual elements of graffiti influence the dancer’s physical expression. Through improvisation and audience interaction, jakob & imani utilized the large open space of Bella Abzug Park as the location for exploration around a central graffiti mural. This performance was a 6-hour durational work that took place throughout the day of October 3, 2024, and was presented free of charge to the public.