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Cynthia Pepper was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1961. As a child, she toured with Virginia Tanner’s internationally recognized Children’s Dance Theatre for 10 years performing throughout the United States, including The White House for President Nixon and The Kennedy Center. She performed professionally with The Utah Opera Company, and the dance companies of Donald Byrd, Loretta Livingston and Bella Lewitzky.
From 1985 to 1989, Cynthia worked as a magician’s assistant with Robert C. Pritikin of The Mansion Hotel in San Francisco. She assisted in creating two permanent magic illusions including the zig-zag and The Dismembered Head of Claudia Chambers. Cynthia studied language arts in Denmark as a Rotary International Exchange Student for her junior year of high school. In 1984, she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from California Institute of the Arts, and a Masters Degree in the InterArts Program from San Francisco State University in 1991.
Since forming CPCollaborations in 1985, (CPCC) many projects have come forth: teaching and performing in Hong Kong, Spain, Morocco, Hungary, and Denmark. Works by Cynthia have been commissioned by The Los Angeles Philharmonic, The San Francisco Arts Council, Theatre Ballet of San Francisco, Central California Ballet, Dance Outré, The Lawrence Pech Dance Company, The Marin Ballet, Marin Dance Theatre, and Zero Gravity Dance Theatre. CPCollaborations has received grants from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Marin Community Foundation, The Marin Arts Council, The Zellerbach Family Fund, Dance Bay Area, Theatre Bay Area, Dance Films Association, CITIBANK, Union Bank Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual, The Hellman Family Fund, Dance USA, and the Carlisle Project for Choreography.
Cynthia has produced and directed live fashion shows for The Academy of Art, ZOZA Designs and Trevor Sorbie of Redken International Hair Products. Cynthia choreographed three educational videos for Japan Television for children to learn English through dance. She also helped to create and cast national television commercials for MARS Candy, Wachovia Bank, Hilton Hotels and Glaxco Smith Kline Pharmaceuticals. For 23 years she has taught all levels of modern dance and dance composition at The Marin Ballet and Marin Dance Theatre. She worked 16 years at the Marin Ballet and 7 years at Marin Dance Theatre serving as The Outreach Director for both schools. She has choreographed over 40 works for the Marin community.
As
the Outreach Director, Cynthia created 2 dance in schools programs called Let’s All Dance! and Project D. She now heads Project D. that serves over 1800
Marin County children with weekly dance classes and end of the year performances. The programs are funded by The Marin Community and The National Endowment
for the Arts. Both dance programs have been nationally recognized with many awards.
CPCC has produced many outreach events including “Invitation to the Dance”, “Dance Reach”, and four “Marin County Festivals of Dance” which brought artists
from all over the world to perform free dance concerts for the local community.
CPCC created “FOOTAGE Dance Film Festival” as the first dance film festival in the West Coast showcasing international dance films. "FOOTAGE" traveled to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, and throughout Marin County.The festival as developed into a dance films class for dance students at UCBerkeley, San Francisco State University and California Institute of the Arts.
Since the summer of 2001, Cynthia has choreographed eight plays for The Marin Shakespeare Company and has received a Dean Goodman Critic Circle Award for her choreography. Five of Cynthia's films have been successfully reviewed by the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN) which distributes appropriate learning products for California performing arts teachers. Her collection of dance films are packaged as FILMS THAT DANCE™ and can be purchased through Amazon.com and is distributed by Ouat Media, Asgard Productions and CTCommunications.
Along with her longtime friend and colleague, Melinda Darlington-Bach the two formed Xanadu Entertainment, LLC. Since 2001, Xanadu has created a variety of dance films, and commercials for television. Nine of their short dance films were produced for Sesame Street™ and are found in the multi-Emmy Award winning 33rd and 34th seasons. Seven of Xanadu's shorts were featured in the KIDSCREEN international children's film festival in Sydney, Australia Spring of 2006. In 2007, and 2008 their short films were screened at KIDSFEST as part of the Mill Valley Film Festival. They will be choreographing "Man of La Mancha" for The Mountain Play, June 2009 under the direction of James Dunn.
Cynthia's latest short film CUBE was supported in part by The Dance Films Association of New York. Her two daughters, Olivia and Rosebud and stud husband are her best creations of all!