Studio Stories: Reminiscing on Twin Cities Dance with Cynthia Stevens - Season 10, Episode 120

Cynthia Stevens/ INSITU slips into swamps, streams and forests creating environmental performance and media. This multidisciplinary work explores the interconnections of dance with original music, somatics and ecology to foster a visceral sense of place. 

Over the past 40 years her productions have been presented in the United States, Canada, Europe and New Zealand. She has created over 60 works including What If I…; Calling Down the Moon; Unearthed with Judith Howard in their collaborative company Flying Sisters Theatre; numerous site-based works for her group INSITU including Leonora’s Dream in collaboration with poet William Reichard  in Wirth Park, Minneapolis and in the Kröller-Muller Scupture Garden, Otterlo, Netherlands, Bodies of Water in the Chain of Lakes, Mpls, BIG TREES/small dance in Muir Woods National Monument, California for its Centennial, and the SOURCE series of performances and film set in Six Mile Creek, the water source for Ithaca, NY. Recent solos include Still Here, exploring species extinction; and site-specific works Dwell, Limb to Limb, and Near/Far. 

Cynthia’s productions features original, live music including her own vocal compositions, the vocal and violin compositions of Jane Anfinson for several works in Flying Sisters Theatre, as well as collaborations with Sera Smolen, Max Buckholtz, Mary Ellen Childs, Michelle Kinney, Carl Witt, Kate Lynch and Annie Enneking.

Cynthia has collaborated with numerous improvisers including Nancy Stark Smith, Karen Nelson, Kirstie Simson, Megan Flood, Jane Shockley, Andrew Harwood, Martin Keogh, Chris Mathias, and site-specific outdoor improvisation for five years with Julie Nathanielsz. She has performed with choreographers Diane Elliot, Hijack, Ann Carlson, Bill T Jones, Georgia Stephens, and FX Widarayanto, and in the dances of Hanya Holm and Nancy Hauser.

Her work has been recognized by, among others, two McKnight Fellowships; grants funded by the Jerome Foundation;  an NEA/Intermedia Arts Interdisciplinary Arts Grant; MN State Arts Board Grants;a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts for her film, SOURCE; NY Danceforce commissions; and artist residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the SEEDS Festival in MA and META in North Carolina.

Cynthia has a BS in Natural Resources/Wildlife Ecology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a certified Somatic Movement Educator and Practitioner of Body-Mind Centering(R). She has taught courses and workshops in site-specific dance making, dance, somatics and eco-somatics to participants of all ages in universities, schools, festivals and workshops. She currently lives with her husband, Jean-Luc Jannink, in Ithaca, NY.