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150 word

Leslie Cuyjet is a choreographer, dancer, and writer. Integrating video, text, and performance her layered, research-based events explore notions of black embodiment within personal and postmodernist histories of dance and movement. Recent solo presentations include For All Your Life, BAM, Brooklyn (2025) and The Chocolate Factory Theater, Queens (2024); With Marion, EMPAC, Troy, NY (2025) and The Kitchen, New York (2022, 2023); Blur, The Shed, New York (2021); and THICK WAKE, LMCC, New York (2024); among others. Cuyjet is a Guggenheim Fellow (2025), Princeton Hodder Fellow (2021-22), and MacDowell Fellow (2020, 2021); is the recipient of the FCA Grants for Artists Award in Dance (2022); and two New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards (2019, 2022). Cuyjet lives in Brooklyn.

Narrative 150 word

Leslie Cuyjet is an award-winning performer and choreographer living in Brooklyn, NY. Her dances often integrate text, video, and live performance while interrogating the performing body, personal legacy, and dance history. Mostly known as a performer, she is also a writer and video editor, which all play an ongoing role in shaping her interdisciplinary artistic practice. Her tenure in New York is decorated with performances and collaborations with Jane Comfort, Cynthia Oliver, Niall Jones, Yanira Castro, Will Rawls, David Gordon, NARCISSISTER, Kim Brandt, and Sarah Michelson, among others. Cuyjet’s work has been presented at BAM, The Kitchen, The Shed, ICA Boston, The Chocolate Factory, and Center for Performance Research. Recent honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants for Artists, Princeton Hodder Fellowship, and an Outstanding Choreographer/Creator “Bessie” Award for her 2021 work, Blur.

Narrative 265 word

Leslie Cuyjet is a choreographer, dancer and writer whose multidisciplinary practice weaves together dance, video, text and installation. Her work functions as a living archive, tracing both personal and collective memory. Born breech in Illinois, the family story goes that she "came into this world dancing," feet first and kicking. After arriving in New York in 2004, Cuyjet spent years as a performer for a diverse group of downtown choreographers and artists, including Cynthia Oliver, Jane Comfort, David Gordon, Niall Jones, Juliana F. May, Narcissister and Will Rawls. Her choreographic voice is driven by interrogating these experiences as a performer through the lens of the black body, and questions how the performer is perceived, staged, and remembered. Cuyjet's solo performances and installations present these intersections of history, personal narrative and the politics of presence as pathways to visibility and black embodiment. Her work has been presented at venues like BAM, ICA Boston, EMPAC, The Kitchen, The Shed, MoMA PS1, Center for Performance Research, SculptureCenter, and The Chocolate Factory Theater.

Cuyjet has garnered recognition and support with a Guggenheim Fellowship, Princeton’s Hodder Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants for Artists; with residency support from Sarah Michelson at David Zwirner, Performance Space New York, MacDowell, Chinati Foundation, Watermill Center, and Movement Research. She is also the recipient of two New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards. Cuyjet is a graduate of the inaugural cohort of the Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women: Black in Business program; and proudly served as co-editor for the online journal Critical Correspondence for two years. She received a B.F.A. in Dance from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

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