Dr Elizabeth Gibbs

Biography

Elizabeth Old Gibbs is recognised as a leader in the Australian arts sector and has had an outstanding career as a dancer, director and mentor. Her research profile includes investigator on the ARC Linkage Project, 2013-2018

Thinking Brains and Bodies: Distributed Cognition and Dynamic Memory in Australian Dance Theatre. Elizabeth has performed as a lead dancer with two of the world’s preeminent contemporary dance companies, Australian Dance Theatre and Rambert London. She was the winner of the Dance Europe Critics Choice award in 2001. She has created and performed many new roles, working with choreographers such as Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, Christopher Bruce, Lucinda Childs and Siobhan Davies. Elizabeth has performed in over 30 countries in some of the world’s greatest dance houses including The Paris Opera Le Garnier Paris, The Bolshoi and The Kirov in Russia, Sadler’s Wells London and The Joyce, New York. Elizabeth has established a reputation for artistic leadership nationally and internationally, most recently as the Associate Artistic Director of one of Australia’s leading contemporary dance companies, Australian Dance Theatre (ADT) 2007 - 2018. Under Elizabeth’s co-direction ADT was awarded a coveted Green Room Award for Best Performance by an Ensemble in 2014. Whilst at ADT Elizabeth attracted funding through the Australian Minister of the Arts and the West Australian Department of Arts and Culture, and also secured sponsorship from Beach Petroleum. There Elizabeth also initiated a company revenue steam that generated $100,000+ p.a. Elizabeth’s outstanding achievements as a professional dance practitioner and her extensive knowledge of audience engagement has led to her initiating and implementing a significant education and audience engagement program that has become one of the pillars of ADT’s strategic plan. At ADT Elizabeth also had a key role in the ADT senior management and strategy team. She was instrumental in ADT programming and curated programs for new choreographic work. As an investigator for the ARC Linkage Project, 2013-2018 Elizabeth deepened her knowledge of industry-led collaborations between researchers and professional arts practitioners and further developed her knowledge of the potential intersection between practice-based and traditional research methods. Elizabeth is working towards the completion of her Doctorate at Deakin University which she began in March 2017, investigating the overlay of cultural policy on programming contemporary dance in Australian performing arts centres. She is regularly called upon by The Australian Council for the Arts as a peer assessor most recently as a member of the most significant national arts funding panel for Four Year Funding in 2019/2020. From 1992 Elizabeth worked as a freelance dance journalist, becoming a dance critic for the respected Dance Europe in 1994. She regularly reviewed London's major dance festivals. She was Artistic Director of the London-based Isleworth Festival Dance Program for three years from 1999. Elizabeth was one of the highest awarded recipients of the Dancers Resettlement Scheme in England and was supported to study law at Kings College London. She was one of five national assessors of Britain’s leading vocational dance providers for the British Official Standards in Education agency. In January 2017 Elizabeth was one of a small cohort of international arts leaders invited to take part in the Artists Retreat hosted by the Arts Council of England. Elizabeth was an opening speaker at the Australia Council of the Arts Marketing Summit 2017.

Presentations

• Thinking Brains and Bodies Research Forum – February 2015 and November 2016
• Stevens, K., deLahunta, S., Vincs, K., & Old, E. (2015). “The Memory Challenge”: A New Method for Investigating Expert Memory for Contemporary Dance. 2ndConference of the Australian Music & Psychology Society (AMPS). Sydney, Western Sydney University, December.
• Stevens, K., deLahunta, S., Vincs, K., & Old, E. (2017). “The Memory Challenge”: A New Method for Investigating Expert Memory for Contemporary Dance. Symposium – Society for Applied Research on Memory & Cognition (SARMAC), University of Sydney, January 3-6.
• Performing Arts Connections (PAC) opening panel speaker (2019).
• Performing Arts Connections (PAC) presentation of research findings PhD; Programming contemporary dance in Australian performing arts centres (2019).

Publications

• deLahunta, S., Vincent, J. B., Old, E., Stewart, G., Leach, J., & Stevens, C. J. Exploring creative thought in choreography together: Process documentation with the Australian Dance Theatre.
• Stevens, C. J., deLahunta, S., Vincs, K., & Old, E.  Long-term memory for contemporary dance is distributed and multimodal. In preparation.
• Garry Stewart: Gibbs, E.O., 2021, Fifty Contemporary Choreographers. Butterworth, J. & Sanders, L. (eds.). 3rd ed. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, p. 254-260 7 p. (Routledge Key Guide).
• Virtual Borders: reflective and digital approaches to choreographic pedagogy in tertiary dance training.  Huddy, A., Old Gibbs, E. & May, E., 22 Oct 2021, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Research in Dance Education. 14 p.