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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 editor, as well as a co-founder of the Authentic Movement collective, Duvet, 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, and Kim Brandt among others. Cuyjet’s work has been presented at The Kitchen, The Shed, MoMA PS1, The Chocolate Factory, and Center for Performance Research. Recent honors include Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants for Artists, Princeton Hodder Fellowship, and an Outstanding Choreographer/Creator “Bessie” Award for her 2021 work, Blur.

For twenty years, Leslie Cuyjet has worked as a professional performer, choreographer, and artist. She has danced for and collaborated with a range of artists including Jane Comfort, Kim Brandt, David Gordon, Niall Jones, Juliana F. May, NARCISSISTER, Cynthia Oliver, Will Rawls, and a canary torsi/Yanira Castro among others. Her work as a performer earned a 2019 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Performer for Sustained Achievement for her body of work as a performer.

Cuyjet’s own work interrogates these experiences as a performer through the lens of the black body, and includes movement, film, text, and theater. Her work has been presented at The Chocolate Factory Theater, The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, Center for Performance Research, SculptureCenter, and The Shed; where her piece, Blur, garnered her second “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Choreographer/Creator in 2022.

Recent honors include Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants for Artists, Princeton Hodder Fellow, Movement Research Resident Artist, and MacDowell Fellow. Cuyjet has been supported by residencies at Dancespace Project, Movement Research, Center for Performance Research, Yaddo, Marble House Project, and New Dance Alliance. She is a published writer and the former co-editor of Critical Correspondence. Cuyjet graduated from the first cohort of Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women: Black in Business program and holds a B.F.A in Dance from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

hi-res headshots

all images by Maria Baranova