Leonard Gibson
Leonard Gibson was born in 1926 in Athabasca, Alberta, and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. His parents were African-American settlers who migrated from Oklahoma in 1911. From an early age, Gibson was a self-taught dancer by copying Gene Kelly and Sammy Davis Jr. from their movies; he later taught his sister Thelma and brother Austin “Chic” to dance. He was performing for pay by age five and touring locally before ten. As a teenager, he took ballet classes with Vancouver teacher Mara McBirney, and later spent a year training (1947/48) at the Katherine Dunham School of Arts and Research in New York City. In addition to tap and ballet, he trained in Afro-Cuban, modern and flamenco. Gibson had a prolific performing career on stages, in night clubs and on television in Canada, the U.S. and Britain including on the CBC, BBC and in the film Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. He founded the Negro Workshop Dance Group in the late 1940s and was choreographer and performer for Bamboula: A Day in the West Indies, one of the first interracial television shows on the CBC. In the 1970s Gibson relocated to Toronto where he opened his own studio. His influence as a teacher and advocate for the preservation of dances of the African Diaspora is wide spread and celebrated. Leonard Gibson died February 11, 2008.
Leonard Gibson was inducted into the Dance Collection Danse Encore! Dance Hall of Fame in 2019.
