Florida State University’s Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) welcomes accomplished dance artists Cynthia Oliver, Yanira Castro and Miguel Gutierrez as the inaugural members of its advisory council this Fall.
Through strategic consultation, curatorial guidance and national advocacy, this group of dance field leaders will help ensure that MANCC residencies and resources respond to and reflect the needs of contemporary makers.
“As we welcome these prior MANCC artists to our advisory council, we remain dedicated to supporting artists from many different backgrounds across a wide range of practices, geographies, and career stages,” said MANCC Director Ansje Burdick. “The establishment of our advisory council marks an exciting chapter, and a re-commitment to MANCC’s 20-year legacy of artist-driven creation, research and support.”
Designed with long-term sustainability in mind, council members will rotate regularly, bringing varied perspectives and vital insight to MANCC.
Meet the Council Members:
Cynthia Oliver
Choreographer and director Cynthia Oliver is a Bronx-born, Virgin Island-reared dance maker and scholar. Her work incorporates textures of Caribbean performance with African and American aesthetic sensibilities. She has toured the globe as a featured dancer with numerous contemporary dance companies, including David Gordon Pick Up Co., Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, Bebe Miller, Tere O’Connor Dance and in theatre works by Laurie Carlos, Ntozake Shange and Deke Weaver.
She earned a PhD in performance studies from New York University, is widely published, and has won numerous awards including a New York Dance and Performance (BESSIE) Award, United States Artist, Doris Duke and Guggenheim Fellowships. She is a Gutgsell Professor of Dance at the University of Illinois and Special Advisor to the Chancellor for Arts Integration.
Oliver came to MANCC twice to further the development of her work Virago-Man Dem, in 2016 and 2017. The work premiered in New York at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Next Wave Festival in October of 2017.
Yanira Castro
Interdisciplinary artist Yanira Castro’s work is rooted in communal construction as a rehearsal for radical democracy. Born in Borikén (Puerto Rico) and living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn), she works at the intersection of communal practices, performance, installation, and interactive technology. Co-creating with a team of collaborators under the name, a canary torsi, she investigates choreography as a practice of collective action.
Castro’s recent work includes a public art project during the U.S. 2024 election and a participatory podcast. She develops communal meals as a means of fostering connection and suturing histories and she is currently developing an installation grounded in cooperation, survival and land memory.
Her projects have been recognized with national awards, commissions and residency support. She is a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow, and the recipient of awards from the Creative Capital Foundation, Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Dance, The MAP Fund, NYSCA/NYFA Interdisciplinary Artist and Choreography Fellowships, and has received two Bessie Awards for Outstanding Production. She has recently been in residence at The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, MacDowell and Yaddo. Her recent work has been presented and commissioned by The Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), The Chocolate Factory Theater, New York Live Arts, Museum Contemporary Art Chicago, Abrons Arts Center, and The Invisible Dog Art Center.
Castro has been in residence with MANCC to further work on Center of Sleep (2007), The People to Come (2012, 2013), Court/Garden (2013, 2014), Archive Residency (2021-2022) and has served as a facilitator for MANCC Forward Dialogues (2024) as well as convened and facilitated la convivencia (2024) an artist-fueled, intergenerational exchange of movement-based performing artists who self-identify as puertorriqueñxs.
Miguel Gutierrez
Miguel Gutierrez is a multi-disciplinary dance and music artist. Recent work includes Super Nothing, created through the Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist program at New York Live Arts, and Frankenstein, created for visual artist Avram Finkelstein at Smack Mellon. Miguel‘s work has been presented internationally for over twenty years, most recently at ODC/SF, On the Boards, CAP/UCLA, MCA Chicago, American Dance Festival and he was a selected artist in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, a United States Artists Fellow, and has received a Foundation for Contemporary Art award, a Doris Duke Artist Award, a Frankie Award, and four New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards. He has received project support through the National Performance Network, MAP, and the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project. His writing has appeared in BOMB online, Small Press Traffic’s The Back Room, and SLUTS anthology from Dopamine Press. His podcast, Are You For Sale? examines the ethical entanglement between dance making and funding and he has released music under the monikers SADONNA and sueño.
Gutierrez has been in residence with MANCC to further work on Everyone and myendlesslove (2006), And lose the name of action (2011, 2012), Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/ (2014), Age & Beauty Part 2: Asian Beauty @ the Werq Meeting or The Choreographer & Her Muse or &:@& (2014), Super Nothing (2024), and for an Archive Residency in 2023.