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Vernard J. Gilmore returns to Kaatsbaan with an evening of mixed-repertoire performances. He will present work he choreographed and danced during his career as a professional dancer at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, along with new works by his company, La Verdad. Since retiring from a three-decade career with Alvin Ailey, Gilmore has been developing new works imbued with personal stories and meaning. For this performance, he remounts the repertory work La Muette and presents new works developed during residencies at Kaatsbaan in April and this fall.
Revisiting and recasting work that premiered in 2017 at New York City Center, La Muette Reimagining explores the vulnerability of emotion—the unspoken truths that gather in the quiet den of ourselves. Centered on the weight carried in the Black American experience, BURDEN examines the constant demand to fit, to endure, to rise above. Home, a solo from La Verdad’s Unchainable Voices, speaks to the weight of losing one of life’s anchors. A striking blow of surrender, the solo navigates grief, memory, and the delicate search for balance. ERECT is a glimpse of a life unfolding—a search for meaning within the experiences that shape us, a journey that will return us to the vastness from which we came.
Of his time in residence, Gilmore shares that Kaatsbaan is a place where “ideas become language, language becomes movement, and movement becomes shared experience.”
The work of dancer and choreographer Vernard J. Gilmore (Chicago, IL) has been part of the Fire Island Dance Festival, Ailey Dancers Resource Fund concerts, Jazz Foundation of America Gala, Contemporary West Dance Theater, and Nimbus Dance Works. Gilmore trained at Curie Performing and Creative Arts High School in Chicago under Diane Holda, then studied as a scholarship student at The Ailey School and became a member of Ailey II. He performed in the White House Dance Series under President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, and later for President Joseph Biden.
Gilmore is a certified Zena Rommett Floor-Barre mentor and instructor, and a certified personal trainer with NASM. He received the Jersey City Dance Artist Relief Fund from Nimbus Arts Center. He worked on the Disney film The Little Mermaid and, most recently, with the Joffrey Concert Group. He continues to choreograph and teach workshops and master classes around the world.