Gioconda Barbuto is an internationally renowned Italian-Canadian dancer and choreographer. She trained in the professional program at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School, The Banff Centre, and under the tutelage of Gladys Forrester in Toronto, her natal city.
A long-time member of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, dancing with the company for sixteen years and Nederlands Dans Theater III, for eight years, Gioconda was quickly recognized as a versatile and magnetic soloist among which Jiří Kylián’s dance films Birth Day and Car Men, Robert Wilson’s 2Lips and Dancers and Space, Margie Gillis’s M.Body.7, and Joe Laughlin’s 4OUR.
In 1996, Gioconda was nominated for The Kennedy Center Fellowship and received The Banff Centre’s Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award. Her oeuvre now counts over fifty works, among them solos, duets, group pieces, and films commissioned by such prestigious dance companies as Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Ballet BC, Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal, Alberta Ballet, Ballet Kelowna, Ballet Edmonton, Tu Dance Company in Minnesota, Oregon Ballet Theater and many others.
In recent years, Gioconda has been extending her methods for molding space and energy through her movement workshops. She is invited to teach actors, circus artists, vocalists, and dancers at academies, and institutions worldwide. She has recently been invited to choreograph by Alonzo King Line’s training programme, and choreographs frequently for Arts Umbrella Dance in Vancouver, École supérieure de ballet du Québec, and École Nationale de Cirque in Montréal where she created and directed the graduating circus production L’abri.
Gioconda shares her creative life in Vancouver with her husband, renowned dance photographer Michael Slobodian.
Gioconda has collaborated with Jean-Yves Esquerre for many years in Canada, with the Dutch National Ballet Academy and since 2018 with European School of Ballet.