PRESS

''Garcia has developed a special passion for the intersection of movement, performance, and activism." 

- Inside the Artist's Studio,WCOM-FM

“Dancer/Choreographer Maura Garcia (Cherokee/Mattamuskeet) collaborates with others to create genre-spanning art.” 

- Alex Jacobs,  Indian Country Today

"Everyone get in their starting positions," calls out dancer Maura Garcia, as she shakes a rattle.

It’s just after noon on a Thursday at Oppenstein Park at 12th and Walnut, and Garcia has corralled nine volunteers, from downtown ambassadors in yellow shirts to a food truck vendor. She walks them through the steps.

Dancer Maura Garcia (center) and volunteers start the dance 'Everybody's Chance Dance' holding cell phones, or walkie talkies.

"Cellphone up to your right ear, other hand down," she directs. "And now, everyone spin outwards, all spin out."

This is a very public – and brief – rehearsal for a performance called Everybody’s Chance Dance. The collaborative work launched this year’s Art in the Loop, with art installations and performances in the center of downtown.

Small clusters of office workers eat lunch at tables, or wait in line at the food trucks. But Garcia’s dancers stand in the middle of the small park – facing each other around a circular sculpture.

"And the idea behind this was to create a dance in this place that was only for this day, with everybody around us," says Garcia, who collected feedback from park visitors to create the work.  

- Laura Spencer, KCUR 89.3FM

"For a few hours on July 9, dance artist Maura Garcia will be taking special requests. She wants to know, “What should a dance in Oppenstein Park look like? Should it have jumps and rolls? Should it incorporate the trees?”...These opportunities are essential to forming a sense of community and bringing people together." 

- Lauren Rutherford, KC Magazine 

"During the rally, students made posters, listened to speakers and watched contemporary dance company Maura Garcia Dance perform a symbolic dance...Maura Garcia, Maura Garcia Dance artistic director, said she choreographed the dance as a demonstration freeing women from the stigma of rape. She performed the dance with four other sexual assault survivors, saying the dance can have a healing affect. "We’re coming out of the closet as survivors, as heroines and warriors," Garcia said. "I wanted an army of people to testify."

- Linda Friedel, The Wednesday Sun

"If you had the opportunity to choreograph a dance, what would it look like? This is the very question Maura Garcia, a local dancer and choreographer, is posing to our community...Everybody's Chance Dance in Oppenstein Park, July 9th...This is the inaugural performance of the 2015 Art in the Loop project. Our goal is to infuse Oppenstein Brothers Memorial Park and the center of Downtown Kansas City with innovative and engaging temporary art that will refresh, intrigue and surprise our audience of Downtown employees, residents, and visitors."

- Madison Kludy, DowntownKC

"You can see here some of the Native look to the modern dance which Maura brings to the piece...both visual & aural, dancing to words as much as to music...fuses in her dance the biological and cultural fusions in her life.” 

- Mike Strong, KCDance

TESTIMONIALS

"I am deeply moved and inspired by Maura’s performance. Her work is layered, muscular, and surprising. In particular, her open, raw, emotional presence inside the movement is breathtaking. I laughed during the joyful animal explorations in “Go Find Yourself,” and moments later, I found myself weeping during the journey towards the self in “What If We Were Warriors.” She offers a vivid and lively connection to Indigenous cultures within a contemporary lens."

- Marissa Wolf, Artistic Director, Portland Center Stage 

“Maura Garcia’s powerful work employs cutting edge artistry, expressing the importance of family lineage and all that encompasses. Her exquisite work was a privilege to experience - a beautiful web of ancestors, honoring the richness of this ancestral land and the richness of our individual histories.” 

- Dr. Dawn Ieriho:kwats Avery (Mohawk), PhD, Grammy nominated artist

"The virtuosity of her movements and the evident generosity of her spirit brought the audience together and into the moment...Her wise and beautiful selection of choreography, music, and symbolic properties set a tone that elevated everyone’s mind and heart"

- Ben Furnish, Managing Editor, BkMk Press, Univ. of Missouri-Kansas City

"...confronting social mores was Maura Garcia’s “Earth Madness”. Garcia, a very self-confident woman, moved fervently to powerful text by Phillip Meshekey. She matched her internal struggle with her external agitation, bordering on rage but ending in a state of content.”  

- Laura Vernaci,  KCMETROPOLIS

“Garcia's new work, Uncle Jimmy’s Table, expands on her longtime commitment to themes of connectedness. The practice and teaching that characterize Maura Garcia Dance focus on Indigenous traditions, ancestry and a sense of community with both the natural world and other human beings. Uncle Jimmy’s Table, a deeply collaborative production, will also exhibit a rich connection to our local artistic community. Kansas City visual artist Rachelle Gardner-Roe has created pieces for the set that are literally made from fabric cutouts of the words, “Everything is Connected.” Gardner-Roe, who has worked extensively with incorporating text in her graphic and sculptural art, adds a material connection with writing and language to the staging of Uncle Jimmy’s Table. Bolivian musician Amado Espinoza will bring his renowned musical vitality to the stage with music inspired by Indigenous culture and the natural elements, themes central to the artistic vision inspired by Maura Garcia Dance. With Uncle Jimmy’s Table, Garcia weaves these and the talents of numerous other precious collaborators into a one-hour celebration of community and connectedness through time and space.”

- Anne Gatschet, Anne Gatschet Consulting, LLC

"The Little People was a strong, stunning performance.”

- Tess Mangum ,Founder & CEO, Sonic Pie Productions

"This summer I asked Maura Garcia to provide a dance/invocation for a special program we were organizing at Haskell Indian Nations University. A panel of the contributors to a critically acclaimed anthology, The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, was being interviewed for a national public radio program before a live audience of Haskell students and faculty and members of the public. Maura created a powerful dance that resonated with the themes of the book and eventually evolved into a moving spoken invocation in the Cherokee language, as well as English. Native programs are traditionally opened with an invocation or blessing, and Maura's dance/invocation provided that traditional opening with great creativity and artistry, setting up the perfect atmosphere for an occasion of learning and discussion."

- Linda Rodriguez, St. Martin's Press/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Competition, International Latino Book Award

"With so much turmoil in the world, it was truly amazing to spend time amongst different cultures and experience music, dance, folklore and spiritual practices on the night of a blazing full moon.  It was a fantastic experience.  The show (Full Moon Dances Jan. 12th, 2017) was diverse yet smoothly flowed from beginning to end."

- Chris Marschall, Musician and IT Professional, Mars Studios 

"That (Look Before You Leap) was one super performance yesterday – the way it was conceived and the way it was enacted.  I sat there thinking how wonderful it was..."

- Maeda Galinsky, MSW, PhD (Audience member commenting 
on Look Before You Leap) 

"Maura Garcia's Uncle Jimmy’s Table (aka They Are Still Talking), a version of which premiered in Kansas City as part of Open Spaces 2018, achieves a delicate balance between narrative and ritual, with choreography that subtly highlights interactions between trained dancers and such non-dancers as a grandmother/granddaughter duo. Centered around a large wooden table and eleven bowl-like, text-laced sculptures made by Rachelle Gardner-Roe, Garcia and her performers interact with the set by alternately using it and ignoring it, through fluid movements and gestures that conjure the intimacy of family gatherings...this work pushes her to new expressive heights."

- Dan Cameron, Artistic Director, Open Spaces