Gillian is an American performer, writer, and storyteller. Gillian’s work is a constant study in, through, and across the borders of culture, discipline, and media. She started training in ballet at the age of five and majored in dance at Columbia University in New York. Since 2012, she has been living in Cambodia, South Korea, and now Pakistan, and integrates the experiences and learnings of navigating new societies, languages, cultures, and artistic styles into everything she creates.

Due to her unique position in the places she lives and the work she does, Gillian’s work is inevitably the product of the dynamic tension of boundaries: understanding them, respecting them, challenging them, blurring them. In Cambodia, she introduced musical theatre and contemporary dance to a government TV channel. Her performing group, which included both classically trained folk dancers and a break-dancer, performed at an international festival in Malaysia.

In South Korea, she was one of the only foreign dancers in the contemporary dance scene. As a member of Second Nature Dance Company, Gillian was involved in the creation of Bit Sapiens, a multimedia performance speculating on the future of humanity. The performance was awarded the 2018 Dance vision “Frontier Spirit Award.”

Gillian shifted to Lahore, Pakistan after speaking at Beaconhouse National University’s “School of Tomorrow” conference in Islamabad in 2017,  and quickly became involved in the budding contemporary dance scene. She co-taught the first accredited choreography course in a Pakistani university and helped introduce the first monthly choreography exhibition. She has performed Punjabi bhangra and kathak with Versatile Dance Company all around the country, and has appeared in numerous commercials and campaigns as a model and actress. She choreographed Sarmad Khoosat’s award-winning film Kamli starring Saba Qamar and Sania Saeed.

In 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, Gillian dove into the world of digital creations, developing dramatic, site specific live Instagram performances, finding stages in everything from her stove top to her closet. 

Following the pandemic, Gillian turned to new methods of storytelling, developing her four artistic alter egos and theatrical one-person plays. Her 1-person play, Searching for Pierrot, featured all four of her characters and was performed in Pakistan and the US.

In addition to her work as a performer, Gillian has tackled numerous other projects and interests. See more below.