Cynthia Oliver is a New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Award
winning choreographer, a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow; 2021 United States
Artist and Doris Duke Duke Artist, whose work incorporates Caribbean
performance elements with African and American aesthetic sensibilities.
She has toured the globe as a featured dancer with 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 widely published author/scholar and
is a professor in Dance currently serving as Special Advisor to the Chancellor for Arts Integration at the University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign.
