Gabrielle Lansner - Filmmaker - Choreographer - Writer

Gabrielle Lansner is an award winning filmmaker, choreographer, and producer whose work is influenced by her background in choreography and performing.  Her films have screened at dozens of festivals worldwide and garnered multiple awards.

Her latest short film, I AM NOT OK is an experimental dance film inspired by the words of Tiffiney Davis, the Executive Director of the Red Hook Art Project, in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The film has screened extensively at film festivals around the world and won Best Experimental Film at the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora FF in NYC and Best Cinedance at the Minneapolis St. Paul Int'l FF in MN. 

In 2020, she wrote and directed her first short narrative film, Lullaby to Love. She is also in the early stages of development for her first narrative feature film, STILL LIFE, which she has penned as well.

Her  film, the birch grove, 2015,  had a successful festival run, screening at the Newport Beach Festival, the Cannes Short Film Corner, and Dance on Camera at Lincoln Center, to name a few. The film won the Grand Jury Prize and Best Experimental Film at the Underexposed Film Festival in Rock Hill, S.C. and composer, Joel Pickard, won Best Original Score from the  International Fine Arts Film Festival in Santa Barbara.

Lansner's, THE STRONGER, 2012, premiered at the Cannes Short Film Corner and screened at over two dozen festivals, including Interfilm Berlin, Festival International du Film sur L’Art Montreal, and the Female Eye in Toronto, to a name a few. Garnering awards worldwide, the film received Best Artistic Director Award from the Lady Filmmakers Festival in LA, the Award of Distinction from the Open Stage Festival in Poland, and was nominated for Best Experimental Film at the Female Eye Festival and Best Cinematography at the VisionFest Festival in NYC.

Her first short film , DAD, 2010, won the Award of Merit for Experimental Film from the Accolade Competition. It screened at NewFilmmakers Anthology Film Archives/NY, the Baryshnikov Arts Center NY, Newport Beach Film Festival CA, and IN THE PALACE, among others.

For over 30 years, Lansner has explored artistic disciplines moving from pure dance works, to dance/theater, to film. She has always been interested in story and character: creating emotionally complex and layered works that delve into the heart and psyche.

Since 1997, she has been the Artistic Director of gabrielle lansner & company, a critically acclaimed dance/theater company based in New York City. The works have been produced at The Peter Jay Sharp Theater, HERE, River to River Festival, P.S 122, The Joyce Soho, to name a few and have toured the US and Canada. The company has received support from The Dance Films Association, The Alvin & Louise Myerberg Foundation, The Harkness Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, Altria, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and The Field.

The company’s varied explorations include delving into the lives of Holocaust victims in the literary works of Bertolt Brecht and Cynthia Ozick, exploring adolescent yearning in Carson McCullers’ “The Member of the Wedding”, examining the nature of forgiveness in a work inspired by the South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission, and celebrating the life of pop icon Tina Turner in their original musical RIVER DEEP. TURNING HEADS, FROCKS IN FLIGHT, a site-specific dance performed at Battery Park City, was produced by Sitelines 2009/LMCC as part of the River to River Festival.

Other creative projects include choreographing the musical play “Shangri-La” for Queens Theater in the Park, for which she received an Innovative Theatre Award nomination for Best Choreography, “Cyrano de Bergerac” for Lehman College, Paul Scott Goodman’s musical “Him and Her” for the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival, Nancy Magarill’s musical “The Boy with the Glasses” at New York Theater Workshop.

Lansner has also choreographed episodes of Law & Order: SVU, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

She is a member of SAG, New York Women in Film and TV,  the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, is a former  Board Member  of the Dance Films Association/DFA, NYC  and was instrumental in developing PS 122 in NYC as a rehearsal and performance space.

"Infused with an eerie Gothic edginess, Gabrielle Lansner’s “the birch grove” paints a somber yet lovely picture of loss, love, and redemption. There’s a clean, sensitive elegance to both its evocative, emotional movements and beautifully framed scenes."

- Newport Independent

“Lansner has a gift for creating vivid dramatic landscapes out of an almost seamless merging of text and movement.”
- The New York Times