Duane Cyrus is the Artistic Director of Cyrus Art Productions and an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, Duane Cyrus holds an MFA from the University of Illinois and a BFA from the Juilliard School. Mr. Cyrus has traveled around the world as a director, choreographer, performer, and teacher. He is also the author and editor of the book Vital Grace, a photographic essay on male dancers of color.
As an independent artist Mr. Cyrus directs, teaches and choreographs extensively in the United States, Europe and Asia. Mr. Cyrus began his dance training with mentor Alfred Gallman as a student at the Bronx High School of Science. Mr. Cyrus eventually became a principal dancer with Gallman’s Newark Dance Theater where he danced leading roles in works by Alfred Gallman including: Precious Memories and Another Place in Time. He originated leading roles in Civilized Evil, Let the Trumpet Sound, and Crossing the Lines by Gallman and Rat's Alley by Talley Beatty. Cyrus also performed as a soloist in Talley Beatty's Road of the Phoebe Snow for American Dance Festival and Elisa Monte’s Treading for GNDT's tenth year anniversary.
Upon graduation from the Juilliard School, Mr. Cyrus was personally invited by Alvin Ailey to join the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1989. Mr. Cyrus danced in Ailey?fs Revelations, Streams, Night Creature, Masekela Langage, Landscape, Memoria, and Blues Suite. Cyrus also danced several of Katherine Dunham's reconstructed works in The Magic of Katherine Dunham. Other works include: Come and Get the Beauty of It Hot, and The Stack Up by Talley Beatty; RainbowsRound My Shoulder by Donald McKayle; Suite Otis by George Faison; Episodes by Ulysses Dove; and Shards by Donald Byrd.
In 1990 Mr. Cyrus joined the Martha Graham Dance Company. Mr. Cyrus danced many of Graham's works including The Rite of Spring, Acts of Light, and Temptations of the Moon. He has danced soloist roles in Maple Leaf Rag, Clytemnestra (as Apollo), Circe (as the Serpent), Diversion of Angels (Red Couple), Eyes of the Goddess, and Embattled Garden (the Stranger.) Mr. Cyrus was awarded the Princess Grace Foundation Emerging Artist Award in 1992 for his performance in Embattled Garden.Invited by Judith Jamison to re-join the Ailey Company in 1993, Mr. Cyrus returned and continued to dance Ailey’s repertoire as well as the works of other important choreographers, including Hymn, and Riverside by Jamison; New York Export Opus Jazz by Jerome Robbins; and The Winter in Lisbon by Billy Wilson. Mr. Cyrus also danced lead roles in Ailey’s Revelations (Daniel, Fix Me, Sinner Man), Memoria, and The River (Lake, Meander, Falls), Louis Johnson’s Fontessa and Friends (Strongman), and John Butler’s Carmina Burana.
Mr. Cyrus has also toured the United States with the English National Theatre’s award winning production of Carousel directed by Nicolas Hytner and was a featured dancer in the original London production of Lion King directed by Julie Taymor. Mr. Cyrus has appeared as a guest artist with Williams/Henry Dance Theater (Kansas City, MO), Tokyo Ballet Group, Noriko Hara Ballet, and Masako Sakamura.
Mr. Cyrus's dance theater works utilize all aspects of the performer's skill and reflect a dedication to exciting, interdisciplinary theatrical experiences with works such as Waking the Witch a collaboration with Brooklyn based writer Nigel Barton and actress Gail Jones that is inspired by Maryse Conde’s I, Tituba: The Black Witch of Salem.