Maya Milenovic Workman (born 1959) is a Slovenian choreographer, educator, and filmmaker based in the United States. A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, she has worked as artistic director of the Montclair Academy of Dance and Laboratory of Music (MADLOM), which she and her husband Reggie Workman co-founded.
Maya Milenovic was born in 1959 in Maribor.[1] She went to the London Contemporary Dance School; the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio,[2] where she worked with Cunningham, Ruth Barnes, Chris Komar, and Robert Kovich;[3] and The New School, where she got a Master of Arts degree.[4] In 1977, she met jazz musician Reggie Workman while in Italy;[5] they married in 1985, and they have one daughter.[5]
In a review of Christopher Bannerman's 1985 production "Shadows in the Sun", Jann Parry of The Observer said that Milenovich's "strongly-curving choreography, with its abrupt changes of direction and marked rhythms, was more interesting than the music."[6] In 2011, her production I Hear With My Eyes, which she dedicated to her deaf brother, made its premiere at the Maribor Slovene National Theatre.[7][8] She later produced another special needs-themed production, Guernic 2012, funded by the city of Maribor and the Ministry of Culture.[7]
In 1999, she was hired as dance coordinator at the Montclair State University Preparatory Center for the Arts.[2] She and Reggie co-founded the Montclair Academy of Dance and Laboratory of Music,[1] where she has also served as artistic director.[7]
In addition to several collaborations with her MADLOM students,[8] she directed the 2009 documentary Perfect Blend.[9] She wrote and produced Outcry, a 2020 documentary on her husband.[8]
By 1999, she had won the Slovenian Ministry of Culture Choreography Fellowship Award four times.[2] In 2020, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition.[4]
She and Reggie separated in 2005 but have still remained creative partners.[5]
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