Amanda Gill

Amanda Gill is DC Casineros’ Founding and Former Artistic Director and a Current Instructor. She founded the company in 2005 and continues to contribute through instruction, including children’s classes at Glen Echo. Her company work has included choreography, teaching, and performance of Casino and Afro-Cuban dance.

Her experience of community connection through Rueda de Casino led her to explore its relationship to dance/movement therapy in graduate school.

Raised in northern Virginia, Amanda trained in ballet, modern dance, and African dance, and performed with Ashe Moyubba, George Mason University Dance Company, and Carla & Company. In 2004 she studied modern and folkloric dance at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, danced daily with a neighborhood Rueda de Casino team, and performed on the Cuban television program Para Bailar.

Her Cuban dance training has included Aramis Pazos and Oscar Rousseaux. In Santiago de Cuba, she studied Haitian dance with the Cutumba dance company and Casino styling with Yanek Revilla. Her 2012 Capital Congress artist biography documents these studies and her teaching at Dance Place, DC Dance Collective, congresses, schools, and festivals.

Amanda’s movement style draws on the body isolations of Son and rumba, Orisha dance traditions, and modern dance. She earned an MA in Dance/Movement Therapy from Lesley University, worked as a family therapist in Boston, and taught Rueda de Casino at the Masacote School. In 2012 she returned to Washington to co-direct, teach, and perform with DC Casineros.

Her festival history includes participation on the Cubamemucho staff in Europe with Adrian Valdivia and Patricia Rivera in 2009, and the Ritmos Latinos Indiana Workshop & Fiesta with Adrian in April 2016. She brings her dance and family programming experience to DC Casineros’ youth and family programs.