Maya Milenovic Workman, a choreographer-director, writer and media artist was born in Maribor, Slovenia.

After graduating from the London School of Contemporary Dance (1982), she moved to New York City to study with Merce Cunningham. She started an on going search of connective elements between: sound of jazz and ethnic music instrumentation, movement in the space, wordless characters and their relationships and in past ten years, video and film. With her first performance in November 1983 at the Cooper Union Great Hall, she started an on going work relationship with America’s Jazz legend Reggie Workman and her own Dance Company.

In 1998 Maya founded a dance-music laboratory (Montclair Academy of Dance and Laboratory of Music), which works under her artistic and pedagogic guidance. Since then, she has been researching the theory of multiple-intelligence and the importance of all arts in development. She follows the work of American cognitive psychologist writer and educator, Howard Gardner (Harvard in Boston), and Leonardo Da Vinci’s Quote: “It should not be hard for you to stop something and look into the stains on walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places in which… you may find marvelous ideas.”

Between 1998 and 2007 Maya completed an Undergraduate Degree in Psychology (New School, NYC), and Masters Degree in Media (New School, NYC).

Between the years 1985 and 2000 she directed and choreographed: Pandora, Abstractions (Beckett, Bosh, Brecht), First Day 47, Lost Ones Opus 2 (Beckett), Adagio ma non Troppo (Original), Jokasta, Clytemnestra, The Moon Over the Mississippi (Seven Deadly Sins, Brecht), Night Bird, Tristan and Isolde (myth), M&M (children), spectacular concluding ceremony at the Cultural Capitol of Greece (Noah’s Arc), Fragments in Fabula and Noble Essences.

In early years, Maya collaborated with one of the finest European theatre directors Tomas Pandur in: Scherezade, Faust, Hamlet. In Grožnjan (CRO) and Maribor (SLO) Maya created the summer Jazz Music and Movement Academies, where young people through drawing, observations (Surrealism, Cubism) and stories established cross-connections with: the language, sound vibration, dance techniques (Cunningham), choreography and directing. Young jazz musicians performed startling music by Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane (Under directions of Reggie Workman, Billy Harper, Yayoi Ikawa, Jimmy Owens, Igor Bezget and Lenart Krecic).

Now and then:
Maya continues…

Presently she is in a process of creating a multimedia “exhibit” I Hear With My Eyes, in which she is trying to answer a question: Is there a psychology of deafness. A video, a robot and a dancer create a soundless space, where the hearing audience finally stands face to face with deafness.

Her next project Guernica 2012 will take us into depth of subconscious, regression and projection (With video and moving theater.)

Maya is developing the choreography and moving theater aspects with children with special needs. In her newly established The Maya Movement Energy (for anyone with injuries and at any age) Maya communicates a lasting change through gradual physical transformation, renewal in a way we think about ourselves, listen to ourselves, and connect with harmony, peace and tranquility.