Maxine has been creating and producing collaborative projects thorughout her multi-facetted career, beginning in Toronto with the MusicDance Orchestra and Phyzikal Theatre company and other numerous independent collaborative productions. Her current projects reflect the influence of many international ventures including collaborations and residencies in the vibrant contemporary arts milieux of the Southeast Asian regions and in Greece. Her vision recognizes the plurality of artistic expressions. Rather than melding already vibrant forms into hybrid combinations, projects are dialogues between her own and her collaborators’ cultural perspectives and aesthetic foundations. Her directions in performance and teaching have become driven by a search for a basic physicality that might be a common link between different forms of physical expression.
Examples of some of these collaborations include:
"KRIMA...what a shame" March 1/09 Toronto, March 8/09 Hamilton, October/06 Athens. Created for approximately 100 performers of all ages, shapes, sizes, and diverse backgrounds, the site-specific event brings together perfromers from across each local arts community to create an event that explores how we as individuals respond to unexpected "disaster", be it a momentary bruise, a city blackout, a world event. The powerful and poignant work aims to draw the audience momentarily into the "heart of the unexpected", the also fundraising for Daily Bread food bank (Canada), and immigrant aid centres (Greece);
"Harbour Symphony" European City of Culture 2006 50 scouts, 20 volunteers and 12 ships created a symphony of ships horns (with composer Rob Power) for the entire city to hear. (Harbour symphonies were first produced at St.John's Newfoundland sound symposiums);
"Boat Ballet in Budapest Park" commissioned by YYZ Toronto, Wade festival 2006, included pro and semi-pro performers, a war canoe team, and a cotillion of miniature tall-ships, to create a modern legend about explorers on the banks of Lake Ontario;
"The Memory Project" (2002-2007) explorations into the links between neurological research and contemporary creative process and dance, in cooperation with Dr. Tim Kennedy of the Montreal Neurological Institute;
“Steel”, the 1999 Singapore Dance Dimensions Project’s commission which explored the contrasting qualities of metal and bamboo in an environment where modernization has spring up out of the forest in just 10 years;
“Steel Solo” (premiered , Canada Dance Festival 2000) where the dancer’s vocalization connected her inner life, her slow undulating pathway of movement, and the danger of passing through a maze of steel rods crisscrossing the stage space;
“My past follows like a dragon’s tail” (nominated for a Toronto Dora award, 1998 and performed worldwide) a more narrative work created for Toronto dance artist Yvonne Ng, symbolically traced an immigrant’s passage from the “old” country to the “new”;
"Windows" performance of dance, writing, and spontaneous painting with Lim Fei Shen, M.Hanafi (the Substation, Singapore);
"Studies for Distance" (1-7, 1993-2001) seven performance and painting installations with visual artist M. Hanafi (Jakarta/Bandung/Toronto)
The "AtHOME project" and festivals. Long experience in the highs and lows of international collaborations led Maxine to produce The 3-year “AtHOME project” (2001-03) bringing Canadians engaged in international collaborations, and foreign counterparts, home to Toronto to have time and space for development work, and to share their understandings and discoveries with the arts and general community through exhibitions, performances, open studios, discussions and forums. Over 100 artists explored ways to bridge the ever-perceived gap between contemporary artistic intent, and the public’s ability to contextualize it. The book "Writings on collaboration" published by Across Oceans, gathers, under one cover, many of the discoveries from the project.
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