About Cynthia

Cynthia Oliver Is A St. Croix, Virgin Island-Reared Dance Maker, Performer, And Scholar. Her work incorporates 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 a 2007 University Scholar awardee. She has recently served a five year term as Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation in the Humanities, Arts and Related Fields at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she is a professor in the dance department with affiliations in African American Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies.

She 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 most recent evening-length performance work, “Virago-Man Dem” premiered at the New York Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival 2017 and toured the country. She has been named a 2021 United States Artist, a 2021 Doris Duke Artist, and most recently, a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow.