Maxine is an independent choreographer and director with an MA in choreography from the Laban Centre and is a recipient of the Bonnie Bird Choreography Award. She was Artistic Director of First Person Dance Company from 1996 – 2003 touring works such as Déja Deux, In the Face of a Stranger, Plastic Chill and It’s Only a Game Show.
Photo: Pari Naderi | Maxine Doyle in rehearsal for The Drowned Man 2013
About Maxine
Since 2002 she has been an Associate Artist with Punchdrunk, for whom she has co-directed (with Felix Barrett) and choreographed the multi-award-winning Sleep No More (London, Boston, New York, Shanghai) (2002 – present), The Burnt City (2022) The Drowned Man, The House Where Winter Lives, The Firebird Ball, Faust, Masque of the Red Death, Tunnel 228, The Duchess of Malfi (an operatic collaboration with English National Opera and Thorsten Rasch) and The Yellow Wallpaper. A documentary on Punchdrunk’s work, entitled Behind the Mask, premiered on Sky Arts in January 2023. A further re-imaging of Sleep No More will be opening in Seoul, South Korea in 2025.
Work for film and television includes the feature film Mari (dir: Georgia Paris), The Third Day – Autumn (Punchdrunk), Brave New World (dir: Owen Harris) and 20:20 Vision (dir: Jake Polonsnky). Work for theatre and opera includes The Cunning Little Vixen (Glyndebourne), Faust (Germany) Evening at the Talk House (National Theatre) and Electra (Old Vic).
Maxine has created dance theatre work for The BalletBoyz (UK), The Martha Graham Company (USA) in collaboration with Bobbi Jene Smith, Verve (UK) and Johannes Wieland Company (Germany) and is a regular principal artist at Springboard Dance Montreal, B12 Festival in Berlin and has mentored for the iconic Jacobs Pillow Dance Season.
In 2019 Maxine created the award-winning, site specific work Sunset (Australian Dance Award) for Strut Dance and the Perth Festival and in 2022 she premiered the large scale stage and installation work Here Not Here in collaboration with visionary artist Es Devlin and GöteborgsOperans Danskompani.
In 2023 Maxine continued her collaboration with Es Devlin with the crictically acclaimed dance installation work – Salamander – for the Brisbane International Festival and Australasian Dance Collective. Most recently, Maxine created FIFTEEN MINUTES (2024) for Netherlands Dance Theatre 2 in collaboration with composer Cassie Kinoshi. Future projects include new work for Dart Dance Company (Berlin), Eisenhower Dance Company (US) and Form Dance Projects (Australia).
