Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş

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 Amy Lewis, Alive & Well Productions, Monsoon Dance Company, CALI & Co Dance, Hamilton’s David Diggs, and as a company member of Eclipse Dance Theatre, eMotion Arts, pateldanceworks, and MovingGround. She has performed her poetry for Decentered Arts' Poolside Poets, Found Poets at the Lost Church, The Big Easy, and the Petaluma Poetry Walk, and as a typewriter poet for Haikuists. 

Her dance films have screened worldwide at World Stage Design 2022 (Canada), SzólóDuó International Dance Festival (Hungary), Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (CO), kNOwBOX Dance Film Festival (TX, Mexico & South Korea). Her video poems have recently appeared in TriQuarterly, Pinky Thinker Press, Rail Switch Poetry,Variety Pack, and Moving Poems, and were exhibited at Drawing Room SF, Fox Yard Studio, Cadence Video Poetry Festival, Experiments in Cinema, 92nd Street Y, and Millennium Film Workshop. 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 Arts. 

Her poetry, fiction, scores, essays, and interviews have appeared widely in Stance on Dance, TIMBER, Ink Sweat & Tears, Dance Art Journal, Samfiftyfour_Literary, Marin Poetry Center Anthology, Gallatin Review, October Hill Magazine, Deep Adaptation Forum, and VerbalEyze Press, where she published her first novella, through Eileen, and Ghost City Press, where she published her first chapbook, ♡-shaped-☐. 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 serves as a teaching artist with CalPoets in the Schools, Poetry Out Loud, LINES Community Programs, and Gallery Route One, editor of Marin Poetry Center High School Poetry Anthology, and coordinator of Marin's first Youth Poet Laureate Program.

She has worked alongside acclaimed poets Karen Benke (The Writers Nest), Meryl Natchez (Former Chair, Marin Poetry Center), Rebecca Foust (Marin Poet Laureate Emeritus), and Dave Seter (Sonoma Poet Laureate), served on selection panels with California Arts Council and Creative Youth Awards, and judged youth poetry competitions, including the 10th National Youth Poet Laureate competition, 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.