Cynthia Oliver creates performance collages that move from dance to word to sound and back again toward a postmodern nouveau dance theatre. A Bronx born, Virgin Island reared performer, she incorporates the textures of Caribbean performance with African, and American, aesthetic sensibilities. She has been awarded and/or commissioned by the Franklin Furnace, The Puffin Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund for Minority Artists, NYSCA, 92nd St Y Harkness Center for Dance, Performance Space 122, Dance Theater Workshop, The National Performance Network, Creative Capital, The Rockefeller Map Fund, The University of Illinois Research Board, and the Illinois Arts Council. In 1995/96 Cynthia won a New York Dance and Performance Award (a Bessie) for her evening length work "Death's Door." In 2000 she was called, "Outstanding Young Choreographer" by reviewer Frank Werner in the German magazine Ballet Tanz. She was featured in Dance Magazine's April 2002 article on Artists who balance academe and the professional arena and is a featured artist on Arts Across Illinois 2007, a series presenting Illinois artists and their work on local public television stations.

Her work has been has been performed in New York at The Public Theatre's “Haphazard Cabaret”, The Pauline Oliveros Foundation's Live Letters Festival, the 92nd Street Y, University Settlement, The Kitchen, Performance Space 122, Dance Theater Workshop and Tonic where she presented work with her long time collaborators Straylight, an ambient “avant world” music trio. In New Orleans she has been presented at Tulane University and NOCCA, and in Illinois at Links Hall and the Hot House in Chicago, and the Academy of Music and Dance in Oak Park. Her choreography for theatre has been performed at La MaMa Etc., Minnesota's Penumbra and Pillsbury House Theaters, New York’s Syncronicity Space, and Harlem's Aaron Davis Hall as part of the 1997 African American Performance Art Festival. She has collaborated with Director Lisa Gaye Dixon and choreographed the movement in George C. Wolfe's Colored Museum for the University of Illinois's production at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. In 2004 Cynthia collaborated with German Filmmaker Marcus Behrens of European arts channel Canal Arte to adapt her evening length work AfroSocialiteLifeDiva for film, which aired on Canal Arte in 2005 and Germany, Austria, and Switzerland’s 3Sat Arts Channel in 2006.

She has danced with Theatre Dance Inc. and the Caribbean Dance Company of St. Croix, Virgin Islands. In New York she has danced with independent choreographers Janine Williams, Andrea E. Woods, and Patricia Hoffbauer and with many companies including the David Gordon Pick Up Co., the Prowess DanceArts Collective, and Ronald Kevin Brown/Evidence. As an actor Cynthia has performed in works by Greg Tate, Ione, Laurie Carlos, and Ntozake Shange.

In addition to Cynthia's performance work, she holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University. Her scholarly work has focused on performance in the Anglophone Caribbean. She has taught at New York University's Department of Drama, Tisch School of the Arts, The Newcomb Summer Dance Intensive at Tulane University, Florida State University, Bates Dance Festival, Williams College and The University of Utah. She is currently Associate Professor of Dance at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.