Leslie Cuyjet, For All Your Life
April 23, 20267:30 pm
April 24, 20267:30 pm
April 25, 20267:30 pm
About the Performance
For All Your Life is a performance, film, and social experiment that investigates the value of Black life and death, drawing on the life insurance industry for method and metaphor. In the film, Brooklyn choreographer and performer Leslie Cuyjet delivers a seminar that reveals how the insurance business is linked to the historical slave trade, how people grapple with the inevitability of death, and how monetary value is affixed to human life. In performance, Cuyjet embodies the passions and conflicts underlying such transactions.
About the Artist
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, blending performance with monument to trace both personal and collective memory. Born breech in Illinois, the family story goes that she “came into this world dancing,” foreshadowing her early journey into movement. After arriving in New York in 2004, Cuyjet spent years as a performer for a diverse group of downtown choreographers and artists, including notable figures such as 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 performing body is perceived, staged, and remembered. Through movement, film, text, and theater Cuyjet’s solo performances and installations present these intersections of history, personal narrative, and the politics of presence—enduring questions of identity, visibility, and black embodiment. Her work has been presented at venues like 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, and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants for Artists; with residency support from MacDowell, Chinati Foundation, Watermill Center, and Movement Research. She is also the recipient of two New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards. Cuyjet proudly served as coeditor for the online journal Critical Correspondence for two years. She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.
Funding
Lead support for the 2025–26 season of MCA Performance is provided by Elizabeth A. Liebman.
Generous support is provided by Anne L. Kaplan; and Carol Prins and John Hart/The Jessica Fund.
The MCA is a proud member of the Museums in the Park and receives major support from the Chicago Park District.