Lisa Giobbi (Choreographer/Artistic Director) Since founding the Lisa Giobbi Movement Theatre in 1991, the company has performed in theaters and opera houses throughout Europe and the United States as well as outdoor festivals and sports arenas, most notably at The Joyce Theater in NY, La Scala in Milan, La Fenici in Venice, as well as multiple engagements with the Boston Dance Umbrella Aerial festivals, Frequent Flyers Festival and the Santa Rosalia Festival in Palermo. She was a three-time guest artist in the Deutche Opera in Berlin.
Her aerial track "gestures of fury, sweetness, and love," (Folha Digital) are featured in Diluvio, written and directed by Gerald Thomas which premiered at the Teatro SESC Anchieta theater in Sao Paulo, Brazil (2017/2018). S.O.L.O performed and directed with Gerald Thomas, and written by Gerald Thomas premiered in Copenhagen (2018).
Lisa was the aerial movement coordinator for Dragon Spring Pheonix Rise directed by Chen Shi-Zheng and choreographed by Akram Khan. She organized and trained 12 artists in preparation to dance in harness at 85 feet. The piece premiered in the McCourt Theater at The Shed, New York City (2019).
In 2021, Lisa once again worked with director Chen Shi-Zheng as aerial choreographer and coordinator for his epic production The Classic of Mountains and Seas premiered in Jingdezhen in Jiangxi Province, China.
2021 also brought Lisa together again with director/choreographer Richard Move for “Herstory” where she created and performed an aerial dance in, on and around a tree on Governers Island, NYC. “…aerialist Lisa Giobbi embodies the titular tree nymph Greek mythology…she floats up and along the branches of a towering tree, achieving otherworldly illusion weightlessness.” (New York Times)
In 2022, Lisa returned to Brazil with Writer/Director Gerald Thomas as Co-Director, Aerial Choreographer and Aerial Performer in F.E.T.O. (Estudos de Doroteia Nua Descendo a Escada)
Her aerial dance work has been repeatedly presented at the Wintergarten Variety in Berlin, the Apollo in Düsseldorf and the Friedrichbau in Stuttgart. She has toured excerpts from her Falling Angels show throughout Europe, North America and the Middle East with the British band the Tiger Lilies and the gala show Daniel Ezralow and Friends.
She created full evening aerial track productions Fight or Flight, Fight or Flight 2, and DeThroWned, which premiered at the Theater for the New City in New York and The Muse, Brooklyn respectively. Excerpts of Fight or Flight have been performed at, among other venues, the Winspear Opera house in Dallas, Texas and the Muse, Brooklyn in Brooklyn, New York - her permanent aerial track home.
Giobbi has created choreography for, and performed in, film, including What Dreams May Come directed by Vincent Ward and Temptesta directed by Tim Disney as well as for independent films, music videos, commercials, fashion shows, benefits, television specials, Off-Off Broadway, cabaret theater, gala presentations and rock concerts.
Her Off-Broadway work as choreographer and/or performer has been featured, amongst others in Ildiko Nemeth’s Some Historic, Some Hysteric and Near to the Wild Heart, Melody of Things, David Rabe's Those the River Keeps and David Lynch's Industrial Symphony #1.
Five year choreographer for New York City’s Big Apple Circus, she choreographed and performed with St. Louis’s Circus Flora where she worked in the air, on horses and an African elephant.
MFA (summa cum laude) from the Peck School of the Arts, University of Wisconson, a BFA graduate of Juilliard, she joined MOMIX (1983) collaborating and performing with Moses Pendleton throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas for eight years. She choreographed and performed with Pilobolus, collaborating on pieces including Televisitation, Return to Maria La Baja and Lands Edge and with dir. Martha Clarke including the Garden of Earthly Delights, Vienna: Lusthaus, Vienna: Lusthaus Revisited, Endangered Species and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Lisa has contributed her essay “Into the Sky: Aerial Dance” to the book A Life in Dance, A Practical Guide by Rebecca Stenn and Fran Kirmser.
Lisa explores the physicality of the body in ungrounded space discovering universal metaphors through aerials. The universal desire for freedom: freedom from political, personal, and physical/gravitational limitations, and their opposing restraints. Aerials and aerial track work specifically enables a restructuring of the natural laws of gravity and those restrictions that are self imposed; redefining the rules which sustain our accepted state of reality to uncover another, ungrounded reality; viscerally connecting with inherent universal dreams, time alteration and primal desires for freedom from gravity.
Curated by Maggie Bowers, Lisa was honored to do a presentation discussion regarding Magical Realism as a live theater form through aerial track work.
LISA GIOBBI CV
LISA GIOBBI MOVEMENT THEATRE:
(1991- current) Artistic Director/Choreographer/performer
National and International touring
including:
Joyce Theater “Altogether Different” : Lisa Giobbi Movement Theatre
La Fenice Opera house in Venice, Italy: Lisa Giobbi Movement Theatre
La Scala Opera house in Milan, Italy: Choreographer for prima ballerina Oriella Dorella
FULL EVENING AERIAL TRACK SHOWS:
“Fight or Flight”
“Fight or Flight 2”
“DeThrowned”
GERALD THOMAS: Writer/Director
“Diluvio” : Choreographer, performer
“S.O.L.O.” : Co-Director, Choreographer, performer
“F.E.T.O” (Estudos de Doroteia Nua Descendo a Escada): Co-Director, Choreographer, Performer
CHEN SHI-ZHENG: Director
“Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise” : Aerial Movement Coordinator
“The Classic of Mountain and Sea” : Aerial Movement Choreographer and Coordinator
MARTHA CLARKE: Director
“Garden of Earthly Delights”: performer
“Vienna: Lusthaus”: performer
“Endangered Species”: Choreographic collaborator/performer
“Vienna: Lusthaus Revisited”: Choreographic collaborator
“Midsummer’s Night Dream”: Aerial Choreographic collaborator/performer
RICHARD MOVE: Director
“Herstory”: choreographer/performer