Written, Choreographed, and Performed by Cynthia Oliver
Music and live sound mixing by Jason Finkelman

Premiered at Central District Forum for Arts and Ideas, Seattle WA

A twenty-minute solo meditation on maturity and the transformation of a female body and psyche. With accompaniment of an inspired live mix of sounds associated with significant life periods, the improvisational sonic shifts signal the changes, mood, and moves of the performer.

Written, Choreographed, and Performed by Cynthia Oliver and Jake-ann Jones
Directed by Dennis Davis

Premiered at TriBeCa Performing Arts Center, Page to Stage, (NYC), November 30, 1998

Bed Op: Dark Interiors is the second installment of a collaborative performance art work created and performed by Jake-Ann Jones and Cynthia Oliver. The ongoing funky psychodrama of two urban black women dealing with their inner demons and outer joys, fears and dilemmas, Bed Op expresses the daily challenge these women face to either make that trek out of bed into the outer world, or succumb to the internal dialogue with fantasy shadow partner and stay. The first installment, BEDOP: Windowdance was performed at the African-American Performance Art Festival at Aaron Davis Hall in 1997. BedOp: Dark Interiors was read at the TriBeCa Performing Arts Center in November 1998, as part of their Page To Stage Series.

Written and performed by Cynthia Oliver and Jake-ann Jones.

Premiered at Aaron Davis Hall (Harlem, NY), June 1997

In Bed Opus writer, choreographer/performer Cynthia Oliver and writer/performer Jake-ann Jones create a fantasy dialogue between two women who know each other only as shadow figures dancing in their apartment windows facing eachother high above the alley below. Trapped in the skyscraperproject existence of urban violence, scintillation, alienation and longing, the two project and abstract their least speakable, unactable and provocative imaginings on the shadowy guise of the other as they dance for each other in their windows in growing desperation and flights of fancy. With words , movement, and sound, Oliver and Jones meld homo-heterotica, ghettogirl logic, and a futuristic funkfeel in this first movement of Bed Opus, a series of installment-works exploring urban home-as-safe harbor, wo/man/bedroom-as-womb; death, life and rest.

Performed and Created by Cynthia Oliver

Premiered at The Kitchen, New York Improvisation Festival (NYC)

An improvisation which explored the beginnings of what would become SHEMAD, “Woman” is a solo meditation on containment, of voices hollering within, and the fragility of a body aiming to translate, manage, and move through the maze of a very busy mind.

Choreographed, Written, and Performed by Cynthia Oliver
Curated by Prowess DanceArts Collective (NYC)

Premiered at Performance Space 122, as part of an evening of work by women of color.

Called “an exuberant tribute to sacred/profane women of African blood,” Elisa is a solo autobiographical work that tells the stories of conjure women who influenced the life of one young woman. From the shores of the Caribbean to the hills of her family’s Virginia homestead, this work demonstrates the many faces of the diaspora in the body of one woman.

Choreographed and Performed by Cynthia Oliver
Music: Jason Finkelman (NYC)

Premiered at The Joseph Papp Public Theater, as part of “Haphazard Cabaret” showcase curated by Vernon Reid

Debut performance of Oliver’s choreography, this work was the only work which was pure movement. A collaboration with musician composer Jason Finkelman (afro-brazilian percussion) this work launched all of the work that has followed. Called “At A Loss” at the time because I thought I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Clearly it was the launch pad for something distinct which would follow.