Dance
Terrill Maguire
Course Director
BIOGRAPHY
Terrill Maguire is an award-winning, long-standing senior member of the Toronto dance community. Originally from California, where she began her career, she also lived and danced in New York for several years.
She is the 2022 recipient the Canadian Artists Network Robert Johnston “Visionary Artist” Award; and previously received the Chalmers Award for Choreography, a Chalmers Senior Arts Award from the Ontario Arts Council, and was a a Dora Choreography Award finalist, among other grants and awards.
She has been commissioned to create works by Dance Ontario for Dance Weekend, The School of Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers, Toronto’s Music Garden, Art in Outdoor Spaces; the National Capitol Commission/Canada Dance Festival, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Arraymusic, Ryerson Dances, Sound Symposium (St. Johns, Newfoundland); and by composers Ann Southam, Mark Sepic, and Gordon Phillips; among many others.
Her work has been presented by the Art Gallery of Ontario, York University, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Harbourfront Centre, the Royal Ontario Museum, Centre de la Danse (Paris, France), Abbey Theatre (Dublin, Ireland) P.S. 1, Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival, Wave Hill/Touchstone Foundation (New York), The Women’s Center (Los Angeles), Simon Fraser University, Dancing on the Edge (Vancouver), Banff Centre for the Arts, (Alberta) The Yard (Massachusetts) and many more venues.
Maguire has been creating for theatrical, alternative, and site-specific, outdoor- based spaces since the earliest days of her career. She originally hails from Los Angeles, California, where she danced in the ocean, in parks, mountains, trees and other locations almost as often as she did on stages. She spent a seminal time performing simultaneously with the Graham-based Marie Marchowsky Dance Company; and Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo street-theatre troupe. Her non-traditional work has continued in churches, art galleries, museums-and nature.
She has been a part-time faculty member of Toronto’s York University Dance Department for over 20 years, and has devoted substantial time to community arts and educational outreach. Maguire has offered workshops, performances, and residencies in schools and their surrounding neighborhoods; in urban and rural locations, including the far northern communities of James Bay, Ontario. Mentorship and creative support for both artists and non-professionals has been a consistent theme in her work.
For the benefit of the arts community and audiences, Maguire created the Inde Festivals of New Dance and Music, to facilitate collaboration between artists of different disciplines. and to offer outreach opportunities for observers. The Festivals partnered variously with The Music Gallery, Arraymusic, and Harbourfront Centre, between 1985-1991.
Her film and theatre choreography have been seen on the CBC Journal, in Duke Redbird’s “Totem Impulse” for the Imaginative Film Festival, and on the stages of the National Arts Centre, Factory Theatre, and Workman Arts.
Her long-standing project, the full evening “Bloodsongs,” is a dance/music collaboration for 10 performers. Drawing inspiration from Middle Eastern music and dance of both Islamic and Jewish origins, “Bloodsongs” represents themes of love, community, and reconciliation.
It was presented in November, 2018, by the Aga Khan Museum, at Rosedale Heights School of the Arts, and Heliconian Hall, where she was the 2018-2019 Artist-in residence; in Toronto.
“Bloodsongs” is now a documentary/performance film created by Christopher Sumpton, through the Canada Council’s “Digital Originals” program.
Recently, Maguire and her Grove Collective colleagues Julia Aplin, John Gzowski, and David Langer were recipients of a National Arts Centre CanadaPerforms commission, for their site-specific, live-stream, forest-based work, “Grove.” They continue to create community and nature- based works; with projects projected for the Algonquin Highlands, and Muskoka regions of Ontario in summer of 2023. Maguire and Aplin were also part of UrbanVessel’s Rivermouth project in August of 2022, creating and performing in wooded areas of Humber River Valley Park.
Dance
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