Faculty

TERRILL MAGUIRE

BFA (UCLA)
Course Director: Modern Dance
Department of Dance, York University

terrill@yorku.ca

A dancer and Chalmers Award-winning choreographer, Terrill Maguire has created numerous works for the concert stage and site-specific environments. Most have involved collaborations with composer-musicians. She has also choreographed for television, film and theatre including Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe and the original John Gray musical, Amelia! produced by the National Arts Centre.

Bloodsongs, Terrill Maguire's choreographic work exploring the sacred/sensual paradigm, was presented to critical and audience acclaim on the Toronto Dance Theatre Foundation's "Dancing the Goddess" program in 1995 and was featured in the film of the same name, broadcast on Bravo! and Vision TV. Skeleton Woman, a collaboration with novelist-storyteller Jan Andrews and musician Geoff Bennett, was the subject of a documentary on WTN, and Ankh, a creative re-visioning of Egyptian dance and music in association with the Royal Ontario Museum, was featured on the Discovery Channel.

Among Terrill Maguire's site-specific and environmental projects is a Celtic triology that draws on themes contained in ancient mythology. Sanctuary was created for the fountain and stream of Trinity-Bellwoods Plaza for "Art in Open Spaces" in 1997. Bile (Gaelic for 'sacred tree'), was performed in and around a willow tree for Dusk Dances in 1999, and Grove was presented at the Toronto Music Garden in 2003.

As an educator, Terrill Maguire has been involved in creative arts projects all over Ontario, from James Bay, where she has done annual residencies since 1999, to the Jane-Finch community in Toronto. She has served a teacher-artist for the Ontario Arts in Education Institute, based at the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario, and on the advisory boards of the Ottawa Board of Education and the Laidlaw Foundation. She has also worked as a movement coach and choreographer for professional performers in related fields, including musicians Alanis Morrisette and Amy Sky, and actors Andy Jones and Aron Tager. For the past decade, she has been teaching part-time in the York University's Dance Department .

A life-long practitioner of integrated arts, Terrill Maguire founded and served as artistic director of the Inde Festival of New Music and Dance from 1985-1992. With Inde Multidisciplinary Arts Projects, she continues to produce community events, such as the Body and Soul series in Ottawa and the Bloodsongs Project in Toronto high schools, as well as creating and performing in her own works.