Choreographer and scholar, Cynthia Ling Lee instigates queer, feminist-of-color, and crip interventions in the field of experimental performance. Trained in US postmodern dance and North Indian classical kathak, she is committed to intimate collaborative relationships and foregrounding marginalized voices and aesthetics. Her current work researches the intersections between dance, disability, and chronic illness.

Cynthia’s interdisciplinary performance work has been presented at venues such as Dance Theater Workshop (New York), REDCAT (Los Angeles), East West Players (Los Angeles), SZENE Salzburg (Salzburg), Indonesian Dance Festival (Jakarta), Kuandu Arts Festival (Taipei), IGNITE! Festival of Contemporary Dance (New Delhi), and Chandra-Mandapa: Spaces (Chennai).

Cynthia is a member of the Post Natyam Collective, a transnational, web-based coalition of artists of color trained in South Asian dance whose work triangulates between art-making, activism, and theory. Her other artistic partners-in-crime include director/dramaturg Alison De La Cruz; dramaturg Scott Trafton; musicians Anna Friz (sound art), David Cutler (jazz/new music), Ravindra Deo (Hindustani) and Loren Nerell (Indonesian/electronic); and visual artists YaYa Chou (sculptural installation), Carole Kim (multimedia) and Adnan Hussain (animation).

Recent publications include articles in The Routledge Companion to Dance Studies, Indian Theatre Journal, and Creative Collaboration in Art Practice, Research and Pedagogy, and co-written chapters with Sandra Chatterjee in Dance Matters Too: Memories, Markets, Identities (Routledge) and Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings (Oxford University Press).

Cynthia was the recipient of a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for the study of religious dance in Thailand, India, and Brazil.  Other honors include a Hellman Fellowship, Asia-Pacific Performing Arts Exchange Fellowship, Taipei Artist Village Residency, NET/TEN grant, CounterPulse Performing Diaspora residency, two Santa Monica Individual Artist Fellowships, and two Artists’ Resource for Completion grants.  Influential teachers and mentors include Simone Forti, Eiko & Koma, Judy Mitoma, Pallabi Chakravorty, Bandana Sen, Kumudini Lakhia, Anjani Ambegaokar, and the contact improvisation community.  She was a long-time board member of the Network of Ensemble Theaters and is an associate professor of dance in the Department of Performance, Play & Design at the University of California at Santa Cruz.