Amanda Gill

Founder and President of DC Casineros, Amanda has been choreographing, teaching, and performing Casino infused with Afro-Cuban dance for the past seven years. Her experiences of sensuality, vitality, and community health in Rueda de Casino led her to study its connections to dance/movement therapy in graduate school.

Born in northern VA, she trained professionally in Ballet and Modern dance as a young adult; this versatile foundation of Ballet and African dance has led her to perform with companies like Ashe Moyubba, George Mason University Dance Company, Carla & Company. While studying modern and folkloric dance in 2004 at el Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana, she
also danced Rueda de Casino daily with a neighborhood team, and performed on the TV program Para Bailar. Not only is Amanda an aficionada for Cuban dance, but an admirer of Cuba’s free dance education and expansive dance therapy movement.

Her casino style highlights the body isolations and dynamism of son and rumba, subtleties of orisha dances, and lyrical free styling of modern dance. After completing her MA in Dance/Movement Therapy at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA she worked as a family therapist in Boston and taught Rueda de Casino at the Masacote School. In 2012 she returned to DC to offer Rueda dance therapy programs and to co-direct and perform with DC Casineros.