Maura Nguyen Donohue
Associate Professor of Dance

Maura Nguyen Donohue has been making dance-based performance works in NYC for 20 years. Her work was commissioned and produced regularly by Dance Theater Workshop (now New York Live Arts) from 1995-2004. Her work has also been produced or presented by Women in Motion, Roulette, Danspace Project, Performance Space 122, La Mama, The Asia Society, Mulberry St. Theater, the Bang Group at West End Theater, and has toured extensively across the US and to Europe and Asia. From 1999-2004, as artistic advisor for DTW’s Mekong Project, she facilitated residencies for Asian American and SE Asian artists in the US, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. As a member of La Mama’s Great Jones Repertory Company she has performed in NY, Europe and Asia in Andrei Serban and Elizabeth Swados’ “Fragments of a Greek Trilogy” experimental operas: Medea, Electra, and Trojan Woman. She has also worked with Ping Chong & Co., Muna Tseng, Pioneers Go East Collective and Loco 7. She writes for Culturebot, was guest editor for Critical Correspondence’s “University Project”, served as advisor and Asian Bureau Chief for The Dance Insider from 2000-2009 and has also written for Dance Magazine, American Theater Journal and HK Dance Journal. Her autobiographical solo work, When You’re Old Enough has toured to schools across the country, was published in “Watermark: an anthology of Vietnamese American writings” and her essay “Ambivalent Selves: the Asian female body in contemporary American dance” will appear in “Contemporary Directions in Asian American Dance” (Wisconsin U. Press/Spring 2016). She served on DTW’s Board of Directors from 2003 – 2011, the board for the Congress on Research in Dance from 2009-2013, and currently serves on the Artist Advisory Council for Movement Research and the New York Dance and Performance Awards (The Bessies). She holds a BA in Anthropology and Dance (’92) and an MFA in Dance (’08) from Smith College and has taught at Smith College, Hampshire College, Mt. Holyoke College and Queens College. She is the mother of two.

Premieres/Performance works
“Tides Project: North Pacific Gyre (aka ‘trash vortex’)” West End Theater, May 2015
“Live at Jacques” Gibney Dance Center, May 2014.
“zero…sixty” Roulette, Oct 2013.
“present.tense(progressive)” La Mama Moves Dance Festival, May 2012.
“I’m not coming back” Danspace Project. Oct 2011.
“strictly a female female” West End Theater, Soaking WET Series. May 2011.

Select NYC Premieres
Dance Theater Workshop Commissioned works: “enemy/territory” Mar 2004;
“Both” Nov 2001; “SKINning the surFACE” Nov 1998;
“Lotus Blossom Itch” Nov 1996;
“Islands: a hapa wet dream” Nov 1995.
Performance Space 122 Commissioned works: Rip It Open Annual Season, Oct 2002.
Righteous Babes Annual Season, May 2000.

Select International Premieres
Back Home Hong Kong Cultural Center, DanceWide HK NY, HONG KONG. Nov 2005.
War & River Sovannaphum, Mekong Project, Phnom Penh, CAMBODIA. Oct 2004.
Flow, Circle & War The Kad Performing Arts Center, Mekong Project, Chiang Mai, THAILAND. Feb 2003.