From Gibney Company to Sleep No More, Contemporary Dancer Eleni Loving Is Driven by Curiosity
Eleni Loving unspools movement like a magic trick. Dancing Twyla Tharp’s percussive The Fugue (1970/2024) with Gibney Company, she captures the work’s airy groundedness with precise musicality and a deadpan delivery. In Jermaine Spivey and Spenser Theberge’s Remains, she is a marionette who has cut her own strings, her gestures at once precisely calibrated and wholly in-the-moment, both cerebral and instinctive. Like a master illusionist, she directs attention precisely where she wants it, all the while maintaining a sense of spontaneity, naturalness, and discovery.
Company: Freelance dancer
Age: 24
Hometown: Arlington, Texas
Training: Dallas Black Dance Academy, Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts, Mejia Ballet International, Geralyn Del Corso Dance Co., Booker T. Washington High School for Performing and Visual Arts, The Juilliard School (BFA in dance)
Accolades: 2022 Princess Grace Award Honoraria, 2018 YoungArts finalist
Own worst critic: Early on at Juilliard, Loving’s tendency toward self-criticism “was so intense that it was debilitating,” she says. She credits her teachers Risa Steinberg, Taryn Kaschock Russell, and Francesca Harper for noticing what she was going through before it hampered her career. “In their own, much more maternal ways, they took my shoulders and said, ‘Snap out of it.’ “
Hit the ground running: Loving joined Gibney Company a month before she graduated from Juilliard, splitting her time between rehearsals for Johan Inger’s Bliss and finishing her degree.
Sing out: For the premiere of Spivey and Theberge’s 2024 work Remains, Loving was asked to vocalize solo toward the end of the piece. “The voice is just as much a muscle as your calf or your deltoids,” she says, describing how the choreographic duo “use it as another part of the body.” She had taken vocal lessons as an elective at Juilliard and recalls the end-of-year showcase: “I had never in my life been that scared. I was shaking.” Expanding on that skill set for Remains “forced me to do a lot of exploration to find the ends of my own voice.”
Leaning into frustration: Loving has arrived at a place where she’s learned to treat frustration as “a good thing,” she says. “The minute I get frustrated is when I know that I now need a different tool to be able to dig further into the work. It’s not necessarily the end; it’s just a matter of getting the right information to figure it out.”
Always questioning: “Eleni is a thoughtful artist,” says Gibney Company director Gilbert T. Small II, who describes her approach as cerebral yet with a beautiful sense of abandon. “She continuously presents ideas out of the box, breathing new life into everything she dances.”
Process-oriented: Loving is energized by the research and discovery that happens in the studio, both on her own and with her colleagues. “I love asking questions,” she says. It’s an interest that may lead to her teaching dance down the line, “where it’s all about the questions, where you can get perspectives from other people.”
Checking into The McKittrick Hotel: Earlier this year, Loving joined the cast of Sleep No More for part of the legendary immersive show’s final run. “It’s really stretching my mind,” she says. “Intention is paramount, because it’s a dance theater show, so you’re expressing a lot through movement.” She chose to leave Gibney Company in August and plans to pursue a freelance career after Sleep No More closes.
People person: Outside the studio, Loving prioritizes spending quality time with her friends and community. “They remind me of who I am whenever I’m lost,” she says. “The dance industry is really isolating, sometimes. Just to get other avenues of life can be really refreshing. Seeing the people I love, no matter what we’re doing, is what I love.”
