Cynthia Oliver
Associate Professor
Cynthia Oliver joined the faculty as Assistant Professor in August 2000. A former dancer with numerous companies including the David Gordon Pick Up Co., Ronald Kevin Brown/Evidence, she currently dances with Bebe Miller Co. A woman of Caribbean descent, Cynthia's work is a melange of dance theatre and the spoken word, incorporating textures of Caribbean performance with African and American sensibilities. Ms. Oliver is a New York Dance and Performance Award (a Bessie) winning choreographer whose work has been presented nationally. Additional awards have included a Dance Theater Workshop/Bessie Schonberg First Light Commission, a prestigious Creative Capital grant, a Faculty Research Award and an Arnold O. Beckman award from the University of Illinois school of Fine and Applied Arts, and an Illinois Arts Council grant in Choreography. In 2008 Ms. Oliver won a Rockefeller Multi-Arts Production award for her latest endeavor entitled Rigidigidim De Bamba De: Ruptured Calypso, a performance project on calypso and transnationalism. For this project she has also received a University of Illinois Research Board and Creative Research awards. In addition to Ms. Oliver's performance work, she holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University. Her scholarly work focuses on performance in the Anglophone Caribbean, particularly in the US Virgin Islands. She has published works in anthologies, exhibition booklets, the Movement Research Journal, and Women and Performance. She teaches dance technique, composition, performance, post-colonial and feminist theory, and courses emphasizing the African-American and African-Caribbean influence on American performance.
Phone: 244-3154
