IMANI GAUDIN
Founding Artistic Director
“Dance is the language of movement shared by all living things, a constant dialogue between the body and the world. Music is the heartbeat of the earth which represents the rhythm of life. Our nourishment is created through the art of culinary creativity. The documentation of our history is shown through visual arts, and we tell those historical stories through acting, media arts, and writing. Without art, life does not exist.”
— Imani Gaudin
Imani Gaudin is an interdisciplinary dance artist and the founding artistic director of gaudanse, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding accessible, sustainable, wellness-based arts practices for underserved communities. Through gaudanse, she cultivates platforms for artistic development, mentorship, and interdisciplinary creation that center care, longevity, and embodied knowledge. As a movement artist, Imani is currently a performer with TRIBE under the artistic direction of Shamel Pitts.
In 2020, Imani founded gaudanse, Inc., which she has utilized a a tool to create collaborative spaces for artists, educators, and audience’s alike in order to connect through the power of dance. The company made its debut performance in 2021 at the Battery Dance Festival, where Imani premiered her first professional choreographic work. This marked the beginning of her journey as a choreographer and artistic director, and since then, her work has continued to evolve and make an impact in the dance world.
Her work spans dance, performance art, and visual collaboration, often building immersive environments that balance rigor, play, and cultural inquiry. In 2024, she was commissioned by Baryshnikov Arts and the Hudson Yards Hell’s Kitchen Alliance to premiere jakob&imani, a durational performance created in collaboration with visual artist Jakob Vitale. In 2025, she premiered nanibu, a multidisciplinary dance-theater work at the Marigny Opera in New Orleans, supported by the New York State Council on the Arts and Kaatsbaan Cultural Park. That same year, she debuted ALL YOU SEE IS COWS IN THE CITY at Churchtown Dairy in Hudson, NY, and led gaudanse’s international debut with her work mamihlapinatapai in Paris, France. In 2026, Imani premiered three works (in progress) at BAAD!’s BAAD!Ass Women Compilation, 92NY’s Future Dance Festival, Pillow Pride at Jacob’s Pillow in collaboration with BAAD!, and Beyond the Black Box’s Black Black Black Week at TRISKELION ARTS that will culminate into a triptych series. The series includes her solo works: bury me in new orleans,new york, please, and What would the world do without flowers…?.
Institutions that have supported the creation of Imani’s works through residencies include Baryshnikov Arts, Hudson Yards Hell’s Kitchen Alliance, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, Pepatian Dancing Futures at BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, GROUNDWORKS, and New Dance Alliance. Her work has been presented at Battery Dance Festival, Trans-Pecos with MOMENTA, Judson Church for Movement Research at the Judson, La MaMa, Versatility Dance Festival, BAAD!, 92NY, Jacob's Pillow, Fondation des Etats-Unis for FUSA Dance Festival, Bella Abzug Park, Marigny Opera House, City Park New Orleans, The Church of Ascension in Donaldsonville, LA, TRISKELION ARTS and The TANK with One Day Dance to name a few. As of recent, she was selected to be apart of the 2026 Cohort 2 for the Djerassi Resident Artist Program
Her artistry and leadership have been recognized through numerous awards, scholarships, grants and honors, including being named a 2025 Gambit 40 Under 40 Honoree, the Alonzo King Lines Ballet Homer Avila Scholarship Award, National Performance Network’s Take Notice Fund, New York State Council on the Arts Targeted Oppurtunities Grant, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation Community Partnership Grant, New Orleans Tourism and Cultural Foundation Grant, SUNY Purchase’s Bert Terborgh Dance Award for Leadership and Excellence in Dance, and the Delta Sigma Theta Artie-Rising Star Award.
Imani trained at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA), SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance, Amsterdam University of the Arts, and The Juilliard School. She has performed and collaborated on works by artists including Akira Yoshida, Ohad Naharin, Kayla Farrish, Netta Yerushalmy, Amos Ben-Tal, Rena Butler, Roderick George, Nicole Butler, David Harvey, Carmen Rozestraten, Marcella Lewis, Michael Rice, and Loni Landon.
Imani began her formal dance education at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA), where she was awarded a Certificate of Artistry in Dance. Her journey continued at the Conservatory of Dance at SUNY Purchase, where she graduated with honors, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance. During her time at Purchase, Imani also studied abroad at the Amsterdam University of the Arts, Academie Voor Theater en Dans, further expanding her artistic vision and technical proficiency. Throughout her career, Imani has trained at several prestigious institutions, including The Juilliard School, The Ailey School, Dance Theater of Harlem, b12 in Berlin, and Orsolina28 in Italy.
Imani’s commitment to social change, inclusivity, and empowerment through the arts is a driving force in her work. Whether as a performer, choreographer, or educator, she strives to create meaningful connections between artists and communities, using dance as a tool for transformation and expression.
Artist Statement
“Why do you make ART?,” is a formal way of asking an Artist why do they live or breathe? My counter to this is to this question is, why are we still asking this. I have and I’m sure always will be in a state of focusing on centering the human experience, care, L.O.V.E., accessibility, imagination, and observation in my universe. These, to my belief, are a small fraction of the plethora of core elements of what forms an Artist or simply a human being—the ability to experience and acknowledge something bigger than yourself: LIFE.
Fantastical ART feels necessary to my practice. As a Black female creator from the deep South, I often find myself questioning what it means to continuously create from states of heaviness and being emotional overstimulated; how imagination can instead become a space for restoration, pleasure, whimsy, and possibility. I am intrigued by fantasy’s ability to be healing, joyful, strange, and at times deluding.
I grew up in New Orleans where food, music, movement, and oral stories formed my sensibility to ART & culture; surrounded by construction sites and blueprints where I developed an interest in architecture and spacial design; dancing in Congo Square which kept me grounded in my ancestry. My practice of crafting dance-centered interdisciplinary works utilizes elements of my upbringing—movement, sound/music, theatrical design, cusine, and the many uses of the voice—as well as what my mother would call, my “intrigue in the ways of humans”(which is showcased through my utilization of audience participation), as collaborators to build fantastical immersive productions.
Inspired by my own improvisation, my movement language feels abstract, nonsensical, and quietly explosive, like a silent firecracker. I approach the theatrical design of my work not as an embellishment, but as a companion to the movement in order to shape immersive environments with their own logic, texture, and atmosphere. Rather than pinpointing a singular meaning, my work creates space for witnessing and transportation where feeling comes before meaning. I value performance as a state of being that holds room for:
ambiguity
risk
excess
humor
tension
spectacle
absurdity
softness
rigor
scale
unconventionality
wonder
to coexist simultaneously. My work asks to be witnessed, not understood, inviting audiences to linger inside imagination as a serious, embodied way of moving through the world. I ask audiences to arrive, release control, and just simply experience.
In short, I am just a human who NEEDS to make ART to survive.