Maia Claire Garrison (aka Maia Claire) is a multifaceted artist working in Orange and West Orange, New Jersey, as well as New York City. She is the founder and Artistic Director of Reel.Dance.Music, a company specializing in dance education and performance production. Additionally, she is the Program Director at Sequence of Leaps (SOL), an enrichment initiative dedicated to supporting neurodivergent children and youth.

Over the years Garrison has worked as a professional dancer, choreographer, dance instructor, entertainer and dance video director. She launched her performance career as a child acrobat with The Big Apple Circus and grew up immersed in two dynamic artist communities in New York City and Rome, Italy.  After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, she toured extensively as a featured dancer, singer, actor with the critically acclaimed Urban Bush Women across the United States, Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
 

From 1995 to 2001, driven to develop her choreographic skills, she founded and directed M’Zawa Danz, receiving multiple grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Along with some of her contemporaries, she played a key role in popularizing the synthesis of modern dance with African diasporic dance forms.
 

Garrison's choreographic works have been presented at Aaron Davis Hall, Artscape 2000, Bennington College, Brooklyn Museum of Art, City College, The Children’s Museum, Central Park Summer Stage, Celebrate Brooklyn, Connecticut College, Dance Place, Dance Space Project, Dance Theater Workshop, Dance On The Square, Florida State University, Gawanus Arts Exchange, Jacob’s Pillow, The Kitchen, The Knitting Factory, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, The Manhattan Mall, The Miller Theater, New Jersey City University, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, NYC Technical College, Putnam County Dance Project, Playhouse 91, IS 89, 651 Arts Brooklyn, Rutgers State University, Summer in The Square, SUNY Potsdam University, SOTA (Garth Fagan Dance/Rochester), St. Stephen’s School of Rome, Symphony Space, Syracuse University, Wave Hill, World Trade Center Plaza, Young People’s Performance Festival in NYC and most recently at Barefoot Dance Center's Student Concert, Arts on the Lake 'Taking Flight' performance with Putnam County Dance Project and at the Middlesex College 21st Annual Spring Dance Concert.