Questions of Practice: Choreographer Cynthia Oliver on Dancing in Museums
The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Dancing around the Bride put real, moving bodies on a stage in the exhibition galleries. Other museums have embraced dance and performance with equal zeal. Last year, when she was a guest at the Center, we asked dance professor Cynthia Oliver, “Should we dance in museums?”
Cynthia Oliver is an award-winning choreographer and a former dancer with numerous companies, including the David Gordon Pick Up Company, Ronald Kevin Brown/Evidence, and Bebe Miller. Oliver’s honors have included a New York Dance and Performance Award, Dance Theater Workshop/Bessie Schonberg First Light Commission; a Creative Capital grant; an Illinois Arts Council grant in Choreography; New England Foundation for the Arts Touring support; National Performance Network Creation funding; and a Rockefeller Multi-Arts Production (MAP) award. In 2009, she was a CalArts Alpert Award nominee. A professor of dance and university scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Oliver teaches physical practice, composition, and performance.