User:Mwdance/sandbox

''Maida Withers is a filmmaker, choreographer, and dancer. Withers is the founder and artistic director of Maida Withers Dance Construction Company of Washington, DC (1974) and a Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at The George Washington University, Washington, DC.''

Career

Maida's career began in the late 1960s. Inspired by the likes of Anna Halprin and John Cage, she soon took her own style, influenced by Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, Alwin Nikolais, and Mary Wigman, from Germany. She was part of what has become known as the modern dance revolution that created post-modernism in dance in America.

Maida created her first dance film in 1967, an educational program shot in 16mm. She began working with a Sony video camera and Ampex one-inch recorder in 1969. The prestigious IMZ Dance Screen Festival selected Orbit for showing in 1992. Since 1968, Maida has created groundbreaking multimedia stage works featuring projected images/films and real-time interactive projects with cyber worlds, laser beams, and virtual scenarios, and other electronic technologies. Her works reveal an ongoing interest in social and political issues and in juxtaposing dance and technology. She has created works with rotating loudspeakers, laser beams, wireless cameras, and video installations - always with “live” music. Withers has initiated and directed several large-scale new media projects, collaborating with visual and performing artists, scientists, anthropologists, and others. Maida is the founder and co-curator of the D.C. International Improvisation Festival now in its 14th successful season.

Collaborations