The Film Gallery
Clara Gibson Maxwell: Dancing on the Edge
Author(s) Larisa Oancea
Format paperback
Year 2026
Language(s) English
Pages 176 pages
Publisher The Film Gallery
Description
This documented monograph retraces the fascinating complexities of Clara Gibson Maxwell's choreographic practice over four decades, exploring the work of an artist who, remaining impervious to the vagaries of the performing arts, created her own microcosm on the fringes of the institutional cultural system.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Clara Gibson Maxwell (born in 1958) is an American dancer and choreographer who has lived in Paris since 1985. Her transdisciplinary work combines and questions dance, philosophy, avant-garde cinema, experimental music, architecture, and somatic practices. Maxwell began her university career at Harvard University in 1976, where she studied philosophy and visual arts, before earning a bachelor's degree in dance from the Juilliard School in 1984. Her artistic vision was shaped by major dance figures such as Anna Sokolow, Hanya Holm, and Antony Tudor. After a brief engagement with the Brooklyn Dance Ensemble, she moved to Paris and collaborated with choreographers Kō Murobushi, Christine Bayle, Andy de Groat, and Jérôme Andrews, among others. Maxwell's friendship with Ornette Coleman in 1990 led her to strive for several decades to extend his musical philosophy (harmolodics) to dance. From her seminal choreography and performance in Ophélie Song (1989), a "rock opera" performed in Paris, New York, and Edinburgh, to "site-responsive" performances at Le Corbusier's La Tourette monastery, Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West, and Daitoku-ji temple in Kyoto, Maxwell's work has made its mark on the international scene outside of established institutions. Her videodance works include Encuentro-Encuentro and Thoreau’s Henhawk Visits Mexico, which have been screened in Asia, Europe, and North America. In 2014, she created the Appalachian Springs Foundation, which promotes egalitarian and multidisciplinary artistic and educational initiatives and has supported projects ranging from jazz recordings to experimental films. Maxwell continues to explore the intersections of dance, philosophy, architecture, and music, while fostering innovative collaborations, both experimental and experiential.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Larisa Oancea (born in 1987) is an art historian and researcher. She works between the South of France and Venice, Italy. With a PhD from the National University of Arts in Bucharest, her research has focused on the influence of Renaissance art on European cinema, from Sergei Eisenstein to Derek Jarman and Peter Greenaway. Trained in both art history and anthropology, her writings explore the dialogue between cinema, painting, performance, and visual culture, tracing how these disciplines influence and transform each other. Over the past decade, she has collaborated on research, production, and cultural mediation projects with institutions such as the Venice Biennale (Swiss, German, and Romanian pavilions), the Milan Triennale, the Fondazione Prada, and the Fondazione Pino Pascali. At the same time, she worked at Studio 454 in Venice, where she co-organized exhibitions such as Burning Matter, Folded Cities, and Text as Image. In 2024, she curated the exhibition "Oh Boy, It’s a Girl! A Short History of Artists’ Books Made by Female Artists" at Artep gallery. She is the author of Nancy Spanier: The Arc of a Dancing Life (Performance Inventions, 2021) and the recently published Clara Gibson Maxwell: Dancing on the Edge* (The Film Gallery, 2026).
Published by The Film Gallery, Paris
Graphic design: Yogurt Creative Agency, Rome
Printed on "water" paper by Grafiche Veneziane, Venice
176 pages; 23 x 16.5 cm
ISBN: 9791098440502
