BodyLanguage Director
Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş is a poet, educator, dance artist, and former US-UK Fulbright
candidate from Mill Valley, CA, holding recent artistic residencies at Djerassi, Stapleton, and
Safehouse Arts. Maxine received a B.F.A. in Dance (magna cum laude) from NYU Tisch School
of the Arts where she danced in the works of Sidra Bell, Lar Lubovitch, Wayne McGregor, and
Trisha Brown. While in New York, she guest performed with Isadora Duncan Dance Company,
Heidi Latsky Dance, Logos Dance Collective, and NUUM Collective. She supplemented her
training at San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and Salzburg
Experimental Academy of Dance, performing the works of Ohad Naharin, Christian Burns, Amy
Seiwert, Eléonore Valère Lachky, and Vittoria De Ferrari Sapetto. In the Bay Area, she guest
performed with the NETWORK project, Monsoon Dance Company, Eclipse Dance Theatre,
CALI & Co Dance, and Hamilton’s David Diggs. Maxine also holds an M.A. in Dance
Philosophy & History (with distinction) from University of Roehampton London, where she
joined the team of Dance Art Journal, a magazine covering the global independent dance sector,
and began her latest commission as a choreographer for a feature-length dance film exhibited at
World Stage Design 2022 in Alberta, Canada. Her dance films have screened worldwide with
92NY’s Future Dance Festival (New York), kNOwBOX Dance Film Festival (Texas, South
Korea & Mexico), Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (Colorado), and SzólóDuó International
Dance Festival (Hungary). Her ongoing project, strikethrough-score.org, described by
choreographer Kyle Abraham as a “beautiful blend of poetry and dance” is a digital platform
where poets can generate choreographic scores for dancers, and has been presented nationwide at
Noori/TWIG Media Lab (Salt Lake City), Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art (New York),
and Mark Foehringer Dance Project (San Francisco). Her latest publications are heart-shaped
box, a poetry chapbook from Ghost City Press (2022), and through Eileen, a young-adult novella
from VerbalEyze Press (2020). She currently teaches with CalPoets in the Schools and Poetry
Out Loud and mentors youth writers at Marin Poetry Center and FastForward Magazine. Visit
her at www.poeticabythebay.com.