Young Choreographer Jumps Into ‘21st Century’ : Dance: Maia Claire Garrison takes apart West African dance steps and mixes them with her own. She performs through Sunday at Wadsworth.

Most every turn in Maia Claire Garrison’s choreographic career has been a surprise.

Not that she’s been at it for long. Only last June, having just graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, she was settling into Manhattan life and a routine of classes, never guessing that in 10 months she’d be in an emerging West Coast showcase for black choreographers and preparing to tour the globe with Urban Bush Women, one of the country’s hottest performance companies.

The interview took place near the Lyceum Theater, where Garrison, as one of five choreographers featured in “Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century,” recently performed to enthusiastic response. Times Dance Writer Lewis Segal called her the “discovery of the evening . . . a soloist of fierce authority.”

She performed an untitled work that takes apart West African dance steps and mixes them with some of her own modern inventions. She will repeat her performance tonight through Sunday at the Wadsworth Theater as the dance fest makes its third visit to Los Angeles.

“It’s been wild. A lot of things have happened recently that I never expected. I guess it’s better that way,” Garrison said. At 25, she alternates between being reserved and talkative, a contradiction that matches the contrast between her compact stature, which is sturdy and powerful, and her face, which is utter softness.

“When I first made this dance, I had to--like it was on the tip of my tongue. I didn’t have a place to perform it and was going to have to show it around to studios.”

But in July of last year, Garrison got a call from the organizer of a group show of African-American choreography by women. She was invited to participate in a showcase at Dance Theater Workshop, one of New York’s premier venues for contemporary performance. Through that “miracle,” as she called it, Garrison soon worked with New York choreographer Doug Elkins.

“I only had a three-minute part, but Jawole Zollar, head of Urban Bush Women, happened to be in the audience and was looking for dancers, and next thing I know, I get a call from her. And so then I get a call from (“Black Choreographers Moving”).”

Garrison’s piece has no title, not because she couldn’t think of one, but because she said it doesn’t need one: “A dance doesn’t always have to have a name, and this one does plenty of speaking for itself.”

Some of the moves in the work are West African traditional steps executed exactly the way they were taught to Garrison. Most of the moves, however, are variations on West African dance vocabulary.

“I’ve taken the steps apart and turned them into something else. Someone who knows African dance will be able to identify the traditional steps that have been altered. And I’ve created my own African steps. They have the same feeling and the same mannerisms, but they aren’t traditional. Then there’s modern movement, too.”

Garrison first learned modern dance technique from her mother, Roberta Garrison, who has her own dance company in Italy.

“My mom studied a lot of (Merce) Cunningham and that’s her basis, but she takes it to a new place. She was really fixated on technique and strength and we used to fight about that a lot. I didn’t care about it. I realize now how important that is.”

Her mother, who is Mexican-Irish, moved the family to Italy after Maia’s father died of lung cancer in 1976 at age 42. Jimmy Garrison, a jazz bass player, was considered a fundamental force in the John Coltrane Quartet, with whom he performed from 1961 through 1966, just before Coltrane’s death.

Garrison lived in Italy until her late teens, when she felt the need to return to the United States. “I had to discover my African roots. In Italy, there was nothing to remind me of being (African-American), except my skin color. I went to Italian schools and of course they didn’t teach anything about African-American history.”

At Sarah Lawrence, where Garrison studied dance and choreography, she also immersed herself in African and African-American literature. Since moving to New York, she has taken classes in West African dancing.

Garrison said she gets a cathartic experience from the African dance steps. “When I started doing these dances, the letting go aspect was attractive, but also it just came through me--flowing out--and I haven’t even been doing it that long. I really believe that it’s in the back of my memory.

“I discovered with this dance that this is what I want to do, what works for me, I still want to study more in depth and go and live in Africa for a year, eventually, and have the traditional stuff under my belt--have more material to work with, to tear apart and turn into something else.”