Maggie Waller is a dancer, choreographer, and teaching artist born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. Heavily involved in the local hip hop community, she pulls from various dance forms, such as Waacking, House, Locking, Breaking, Hip Hop, Postmodern Contemporary, and Tap in her performance work, choreography, and freestyle/battle practice. 

 

She is a recent graduate of Arizona State University, obtaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance, a Minor in Justice Studies, and two Certificates in Arts Entrepreneurship and Socially-Engaged Practice in Design and the Arts. Throughout her time at ASU, she has choreographed for and performed in various shows, such as Spring Dance Fest, Undergraduate Project Presentations, and the Jews and Jewishness in the Dance World Conference evening-length performance. As treasurer and secretary of the Urban Arts Club, she has helped produce events such as Urban Sol and the Come As You Are Ball that bring the institution and the community together to celebrate street dance history and culture. As a part of Urban Arts Club, Maggie has also traveled to Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Paris, France to expand her knowledge while exchanging with other artists creatively and culturally. She recently presented for the second time at the American College Dance Association conference, performing a self-choreographed solo for adjudication exploring Jewish identity, race, and empathetic action entitled “to take apart, then build again”.

 

Maggie is interested in the intersection between arts and activism and in the power of dance to heal, empower, and connect individuals and communities. She recently premiered her Honors Thesis performance, "Reclamation", an evening-length community jam and production. This self-produced work explored why women apologize, the ways in which this apology affects how women treat, view, and navigate their bodies in space, and how dance can be the mechanism by which women individually and collectively find joy, power, and liberation. 

 

In college, she completed an internship in Fundraising and Development with Free Arts for Abused Children of Arizona. In this internship, she explored nonprofit administration in an organization that uses various art mediums to combat the trauma associated with abuse, violence, and homelessness.

Maggie is a Fulbright Summer Institute Participant, an Education Leader of the Be Kind People Project, and a recipient of the Joan Frazer Memorial Award for Judaism and the Arts. Maggie currently lives in Washington, D.C., teaching and making. She plans to dance professionally, continue making work, use dance to engage with the youth, elderly communities, and communities of all abilities and backgrounds, explore writing for dance and dance dramaturgy, and pursue her hunger for learning and creating.