Biography
After dancing and choreographing professionally for 17 years in New York City’s vibrant dance scene, Nina Martin, Ph.D.'s work has been presented across the USA and abroad including Russia, Austria, Ireland, Finland, Lithuania, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Venezuela, Mexico and Japan. Performance credits include Lower Left Performance Collective (www.lowerleft.org), David Gordon Pick-Up Company, Mary Overlie, Deborah Hay, Martha Clarke, Simone Forti and PBS Dance in America Beyond the Mainstream program dancing in the section that featured Steve Paxton and Contact Improvisation. Martin has received funding for her work from the National Endowment for the Arts through six choreography fellowships, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Joyce-Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Meet the Composer/ Choreographer Grant, Irvine Foundation (CA), Texas Commission on the Arts and more. She was a founding member of Channel Z (NYC), New York Dance Intensive and Lower Left. Martin has served on the faculties of UCLA’s Department of World Art and Cultures and New York University’s Experimental Theatre Wing and colleges and universities across the states. Presently she is a board president of Marfa Live Arts, which hosts the March 2 Marfa Performance Lab and Dance Ranch Marfa workshops in Marfa, and associate professor at TCU School for Classical & Contemporary Dance (www.dance.tcu.edu). Martin completed her MFA and Ph.D. at Texas Woman’s University. ReWire Movement Method and Ensemble Thinking are dance systems initially conceived by Nina Martin and further developed with the Lower Left Performance Collective.
Areas of Expertise (8)
Pedagogies of Spontaniety
Choreography
Health
Alternative Therapies
Dance
Dance Therapy
Collaboration
Improvisational dance practices
Accomplishments (4)
Midland Public Library (Marfa Live Arts/Lower Left Residency)
2015
Texas Commission on the Arts 2007 (Marfa Theatre/Lower Left residency)
2005, 2006, 2007 2008, 2009
Joyce-Mertz Gilmore Foundation
1990
National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowships
1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1990
Social