Cindy Marvell was drawn to juggling watching her father, a physicist, experiment with three balls and balance objects. Her mother, a music journalist, played piano for her first juggling routine in the eighth grade at Bank Street. As a teenager she trained at the Antic Arts Academy at SUNY Purchase juggling in events and shows around New York City including the Carnegie Hall Serenades Festival, Young People’s Concerts at Avery Fisher Hall, and in a PBS Special directed by Elizabeth Swados. Cindy was a frequent performer in the Fieldston HS Cabaret and a leader of the juggling club in high school and college. She also played cello and handbells and studied with Nuebert Ballet. She continued performing professionally, solo and with students & professors, co-teaching the EXCO course in juggling, performing on Grafton Street and at Covent Garden and doing various gigs as a student abroad in Ireland and England, graduating from Oberlin College with honors in 1988.
The following year Cindy worked in Japan and became the first woman ever to win the International Juggling Association”s Championship. The name “Marvell” came about as she had juggled to poetry by Andrew Marvell.
Marvell joined Lazer Vaudeville in 1994 with founding director & bicycle hoop juggler Carter Brown and Randy Johnson, both former Ringling clowns, and toured as a cast member in performing arts centers across North America and Canada and theaters in Singapore, England, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Alaska. Lazer vaudeville collaborators include: Jeff Taub, Seth Bloom, Reid Belstock, Jeffrey Daymont, Bee Jay Joyer, Ilka Licht, Luke Wilson, Nicholas Flair, Warren Hammond, and Greg Kennedy. Members of Squirm Burpee Circus also performed Lazer Vaudeville on tour in 2005. The show had toured with various performers including Mark Faje since 1987.
Marvell’s solo work has taken her to Europe, Japan, and Tbilisi, Georgia. She worked twice solo at Nagasaki’s Holland Village for up to six months. In the early 90s she joined San Francisco”s Pickle Family Circus with founding director Larry Pisoni, performing at the Palace of Fine Arts, the Guthrie Theater, and Cincinnati Playhouse-in-the-Park.
Cindy studied dance at the Limon Institute and the Isadora Duncan Foundation, performing with Howard Fireheart”s dance theater company in the East Village. New York shows include Bouncing Back with Wendy Osserman at Dance Theater Workshop, Ladyfingers with Kezia Tenenbaum at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Cirque Eloize at the New Victory Theater, Sesame Street and the N.Y. Renaissance Festival. She worked at King’s Island Theme Park in Cincinnati, Ohio, while a college student and later on Chandris Cruise Lines in the Caribbean. She repeated at Lincoln
Center Out-of-Doors solo and with the All American Juggle-in with Hovey Burgess and club passers.
Cindy has won two Groundhog Awards, Most Incredible and Most Amazing (the first solo woman) and a team silver medal at the IJA with the trio Darn, Good and Funny.
Cindy is co-founder of the Boulder Circus Center and has taught at the Big Apple Circus School and lead workshops in juggling techniques and movement for professionals. She has also taught kids circus as a counselor at Camp Treetops in the Adirondacks and at Waldorf Shining Mountain/Shepard Valley in Colorado. She performed in Boulder Ballet’s Nutcracker with Peter Davison. Cindy is an alumnus of Showbiz Blueprint, Barry Friedman”s corporate network of performing artists.
Videos include DVDs: A Juggling Journey: Cindy Marvell in Performance, A Juggling Journey: Fringe Festival Poetry Show, Trailblazers: Women Who Juggle, Lazer Vaudeville Off Broadway, Digital download: Juggling for Japan (available on amazon.com to benefit earthquake response), VHS: Lazer Vaudeville – Live at the Ellen Eccles Theatre.
Cindy has written a young adult novel, “Shadow Princess: An Indonesian Story” with co-author and puppeteer Tamara Fielding. The book, a performance adventure story, is available on amazon.com and the Barnes & Noble website. She completed the MFA screenwriting program at Full Sail University and is working on a script of the book for animation. She also completed the Summer Writing Program at Naropa University in 2009. She won a “Poetry in Motion” prize for “things that fall,” a poem about juggling made into a film. She also took short story and acting classes at the New School in NYC.
Cindy has also acted in a couple short films. In 2012 Cindy played herself in a film installation called “Figure Studies” directed by David Michalek (New York & Edinburgh) and in 2013 played a street performer in the short film “Jeunne Fille” directed by Joshua McQuilkin.
Cindy has a son, Theo, with hoop juggler Carter Brown. Theo Marvell-Brown does 4 scarves, diabolo, passing interceptions, and sometimes gets into the act! Born in 2006, he has many abilities including: chess, reading & math, music and archery.
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