My work happens at the intersection of writing and movement. I am a poet and dancer with a practice rooted in recitation, writing, choreographing and improvisation. I write, and I dance and I often work interdisciplinarily choreographing from the words of a poem and/or translating movement phrases into speech and text. My work explores how words are bodies too: with speed, and levels, and shape and size, (making images), and how language is communicated with the body. A turn and a turn of phrase mean the same thing but in different forms. The space of overlap where arranging lines in a stanza becomes like arranging steps of movement is where I anchor my approach, talking/writing/thinking about how I move as much as I connect my movement to how I’m thinking/talking/writing for performance. I am interested in storytelling in poetic and dance forms and too, imagining how words, gestures, and sounds/vibrations combine to tell. I hold a B.A in American Studies from Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT), and an M.F.A in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL).
Follow my work here: @maya.odim
Read my essays here: Performance Response Journal
Find some of my projects here: www.mayaodim.com