Nina Martin

Identifying as a choreographer, pedagogue, theorist and performer, Martin’s research springs from 45 years of embodied inquiry and applied dance centered in the phenomena of perception, health, composition and preconscious movement states.

After dancing in Mexico, Austin and choreographing professionally for 18 years in New York City’s vibrant dance scene, Martin’s choreography and pedagogical methods have been presented across the USA and abroad including Russia, Austria, Ireland, England, Finland, Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Israel, Japan, Venezuela, Mexico and Canada.

Martin has received funding 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 Grants, Irvine Foundation (CA), Texas Commission on the Arts, and others. She was a founding member of Channel Z (NYC), New York Dance Intensive, and Lower Left Collective. Performance credits include Lower Left Performance Collective (www.lowerleft.org), David Gordon Pick-Up Company, Mary Overlie, Deborah Hay, Martha Clarke, Simone Forti, PBS Dance in America Beyond the Mainstream program dancing in the section that featured Steve Paxton and Contact Improvisation.

She has served on the faculties of UCLA’s Department of World Art and Cultures and New York University’s Experimental Theatre Wing as well as guesting at colleges and universities across the states.  Presently she is board president of Marfa Live Arts, which hosts the March 2 Marfa Performance Lab and Dance Ranch Marfa workshops in Marfa, TX and Professor of Dance Studies at TCU School for Classical & Contemporary Dance (www.dance.tcu.edu).  Martin completed her MFA and PhD at Texas Woman’s University. ReWire Movement States and Ensemble Thinking are dance systems conceived by Nina Martin and taught internationally. www.nina.martin.org

• Lower Left Performance Collective www.lowerleft.org
• Screen Dance
• ReWire Movement States in collaboration with those living with cerebral palsy
• Dance Improvisation and neuro-cognitive research
• Collaborative decision making through Ensemble Thinking

• TCU Deans Research Award
• TCU IS Grant for Digital Pedagogy 2019
• National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowships 1984, 1985, 1986,1987,1988, 1990
• Joyce-Mertz Gilmore Foundation 1990
• New York State Council on the Arts 1988, 1990
• Meet the Composer – Composer/Choreographer Grant with Michael Daughtery 1991
• Irvine Foundation Dance Makers Award 2001
• Permian Basin Foundation 2003
• Texas Commission on the Arts 2005, 2006, 2007 2008, 2009
• Midland Public Library (Marfa Live Arts/Lower Left Residency 2015)

• Ensemble Thinking
• Hamilton Floor Barre with Mary Overlie
• ReWire — Dancing States

Congress on Research in Dance National Dance Education Association

• Board President of Marfa Live Arts
• Advisory Committee of Texas Dance Improvisation Festival