About Cynthia

Cynthia Oliver is a St. Croix, Virgin Island reared dance maker, performer and scholar. Her scholarly work is focused in the Anglophone Caribbean and her dance theatre constructions incorporate textures of Caribbean performance with African and American aesthetic sensibilities. She has toured the globe as a featured dancer with contemporary companies David Gordon Pick Up Co., Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, Bebe Miller Company, and Tere O’Connor Dance and as an actor in works by Laurie Carlos, Greg Tate, Ione, Ntozake Shange, and Deke Weaver. She earned a PhD in performance studies from New York University, is a New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Award winning choreographer, a 2016 Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography Mellon Fellow, a 2017 University of Illinois Center for Advanced Studies Associate (and now CAS Professor), and 2007 University Scholar awardee. Formerly Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation in the Humanities, Arts and Related Fields at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, she is currently Special Advisor to the Chancellor for Arts Integration. Cynthia is the Gutgsell professor in Dance with affiliations in African American Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies. Oliver is a widely published author with articles in a variety of journals and edited volumes. Her single authored book is titled, Queen of the Virgins: Pageantry and Black Womanhood in the Caribbean (2009). Her last evening-length performance work, “Virago-Man Dem” premiered at Brooklyn Academy of Music’s (BAM) Next Wave Festival 2017 and toured the country. She is a 2021 United States Artist, 2021 Doris Duke Artist, and a 2022 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow.

Headshot credit: Laura Bianchi for Bogliasco