Artist in residence Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş will lead an introduction to using poetry scores in the creation of movement. It will consist of a physical and written improvisatory warm-up using the language aesthetics of erasure poetry technique, a form of found poetry where pre-existing text is blacked out to form new sequences of text. The warm-up will be followed by a composition exercise with poetry scores and an opportunity to share discoveries made within the creative process.
Workshop participants will have the opportunity to contribute their own poems as well as respond to the poems through movement. All poems by attendees will be displayed at Surel’s Place during open studio hours and during a culminating installation at the end of the month.
This workshop has been offered both online and in-person at NYU Tisch, University of Roehampton, Shawl Anderson Dance Center, Big Sky Workshop, The Writer’s Nest, The Collective SF, Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, Gallery Route One, CalPoets in the Schools, and more!
BIOGRAPHY
Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş is Turkish-American poet, choreographer, and filmmaker based in Northern California engaging with the disciplines of choreography and visual art as tools for grasping poetic language. Her work critically investigates how poetics can serve as a thread in understanding where the body belongs in the vastly changing ecosphere. She has served as resident artist at Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Tofte Lake Center, Stapleton School for the Performing Arts, SAFEhouse Arts, and The Center at Eagle Hill, and has been commissioned for World Stage Design (Canada), 92NY’s Future Dance Festival (New York), and FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival (San Francisco). Her dance films have received official selection from festivals including Cadence Video Poetry Festival (Seattle), kNOwBOX Dance Film Festival (Texas, South Korea & Mexico), Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (Colorado), and SzólóDuó International Dance Festival (Hungary). Her choreographic poetry platform, strikethrough-score.org, has been presented nationwide at Noori/TWIG Media Lab (Salt Lake City), Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art (New York), and in San Francisco at The Drawing Room SF and Mark Foehringer Dance Project, and published with Poethesis Mag (UK), LOCULUS Collective (Massachusetts), and Pinky Thinker Press (New Jersey). She is the author of heart-shaped box, a poetry chapbook from Ghost City Press (2022), and through Eileeen, a young-adult novella from VerbalEyze Press (2020). Maxine received a B.F.A. in Dance (magna cum laude) from NYU Tisch and an M.A. in Dance Philosophy (with distinction) from University of Roehampton London as a US-UK Fulbright Finalist. She currently dances with pateldanceworks, MovingGround, and Push Up Something Hidden, covers the global dance scene for Dance Art Journal (UK), and teaches with CalPoets, Gallery Route One, and Alonzo King LINES Ballet. She is the founding director of Marin County, California’s first Youth Poet Laureate Program.
