Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş is a choreographer, writer, and filmmaker from Northern California currently researching the intersections of language and movement through interdisciplinary collaborations with composers, designers, animators, coders, writers, and dancers. Maxine graduated with an MA in Dance Philosophy (with Distinction) from University of Roehampton, London and with a BFA in Dance (Magna Cum Laude with Honors) from NYU Tisch, where she danced in the works of Sidra Bell, Lar Lubovitch, Wayne McGregor, and Trisha Brown and guest performed for Isadora Duncan Dance Company, Heidi Latsky Dance, NUUM Collective, and Logos Dance Collective. While in New York, Maxine interned in the Children's Reading Room at Poets House, performed regularly at Bowery Poetry Club, and served as poetry editor for NYU's independent newspaper, Washington Square News. In the Bay Area, Maxine has guest performed with Alive & Well Productions, pateldanceworks, Monsoon Dance Company, CALI & Co Dance, Hamilton’s David Diggs, and as a company member of Eclipse Dance Theatre, eMotion Arts, and MovingGround. She has performed her poetry for Decentered Arts' Poolside Poets, Found Poets at the Lost Church, and the Petaluma Poetry Walk.
Her dance films have screened worldwide at the SzólóDuó International Dance Festival (Hungary), FilmFest by Rogue Dancer (USA), Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (USA), kNOwBOX Dance Film Festival (USA/South Korea), and MODArts' Move to Change Dance Festival (USA). Her video poems have recently appeared in TriQuarterly, Pinky Thinker Press, Variety Pack, and Moving Poems, and were exhibited at Drawing Room SF, Cadence Video Poetry Festival, and 92nd Street Y. She has held residencies at Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Tofte Lake Center, Surel's Place, Center at Eagle Hill, iMPACt Center for the Arts, Stapleton School for the Performing Arts, and SAFEhouse.
Her poetry, fiction, scores, essays, and interviews have appeared widely in Dance Art Journal, Samfiftyfour_Literary, Marin Poetry Center Anthology, Gallatin Review, October Hill Magazine, Deep Adaptation Forum, VerbalEyze Press, where she published her first novella, through Eileen, and Ghost City Press, where she published her first chapbook, heart-shaped-box. Her ongoing project, strikethrough-score.org, is a digital platform where poets can generate choreographic scores for dancers - it has been exhibited at the The Museum of Wild & Newfangled Art, (New York), Noori/TWIG Media Lab (Salt Lake City), Poethesis Mag (UK), and LOCULUS Collective (Massachusetts). She currently serves as a poet-teacher with CalPoets in the Schools and Poetry Out Loud, artist-in-the-schools with Gallery Route One, editor of Marin Poetry Center's High School Poetry Anthology, and coordinator of Marin's first Youth Poet Laureate Program.
She has worked alongside acclaimed poets Karen Benke (Writer's Nest), Meryl Natchez, Rebecca Foust (Marin Poet Laureate Emeritus), and judged youth poetry competitions, including Marin Poetry Center High School Anthology Contest, Marin County Poetry Out Loud, and Mill Valley Library's Teen Slam Competition. She believes that within the acts of physical creation exist traces of poetic origin, and that every body contains a textual sensibility, a poem breathing in the atlas of its dancer.
