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read the essay "the beauty of dancing in our elder lives" by Martina Young, published in the Fall 2024 issue of Coreopsis Journal of Myth and Theatre!
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Martina Young
Somatic Pilates Educator
Somatic Expressive Dance/Movement Facilitator
Photos by L. Martina Young
Photos by Candy Webb
L. Martina Young is an Expressive Movement Teacher at two Senior Residences in Reno, NV:
For more information, please contact Martina:
Follow along on Facebook!
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THE SWAN LECTURES: "How Swan Bridged the World” — Martina returns to Revel Rancharrah for her lecture presentation on the swan trope in world cultures. Just off the heels of her guest artist performance with the Reno Philharmonic Orchestra concert, Dare We Dance for which she choreographed and danced to Camille Saint-Saens’s The Swan, Martina sheds light on the swan qualities needing to be renewed for a re-imagined humanitas
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L. Martina Young is invited as Guest Dance Artist with the Reno Philharmonic Orchestra for its upcoming Fall event, Dare We Dance, November 7 & 8, 2020, to dance Camille Saint-Saens’s The Swan.
Concerts are Livestream. Get online tickets now. |
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Chief Editor of the LA Dance Chronicle, Jeff Slayton—formerly of Merce Cunningham and Viola Farber Dance Companies—just published an article on Martina, originally from Los Angeles.
Read more. |
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L. Martina Young
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Reno Philharmonic Orchestra
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Laura Jackson, Conductor
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L. Martina Young is Guest Artist with the Reno Philharmonic Orchestra to choreograph a new solo to Camille Saint-Saens’s The Swan, November 2020.
Martina's The Swan performance with the Reno Philharmonic Orchestra, November 2020: View Now
How Swan Bridged The World
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Martina returns to Revel Rancharrah Senior Community Living with her lecture presentation, How Swan Bridged the World on Friday, April 17, 2020.
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Lyndsay Urquhart from Sydney, Australia and of Koori lineage becomes the new director of the project, Black Swans, an opera poem © . Lyndsay takes on a leadership role in fulfilling a re-imagination of the work, — having been envisioned as an international conversation and collaboration on the image of the swan and its value and significance for peoples of the world. Welcome and thank you Lyndsay!
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Martina was an invited Speaker for the 2019 BOLD II FESTIVAL where she delivered her talk, "BLACK SWANS: An International Invitation and Collaboration""...The Black Swans work, however, is not finished; it has only begun. As an international collaboration, conversation, and invitation, Black Swans is poised to be re-imagined by Australian artists,—indigenous and non-indigenous, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike. Only then will the scope of its values yield and its vision be fulfilled. The black swan has found its belonging to and among us. The question is: how do we belong to the black swan?..."
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Learn more here
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African Diaspora Student Graduating Class of 2018
The University of Nevada, Reno
Center for Student Cultural Diversity
2018 African Diaspora Graduating Class
L. Martina Young, Ph.D. I KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Center for Student Cultural Diversity
2018 African Diaspora Graduating Class
L. Martina Young, Ph.D. I KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Swan Time Dreaming
On February 17, 2018 I motored over Donner Pass to Santa Cruz, California to join fellow ARTSPACE artist Linda Cover in an artist residency at The Tannery Arts Center.
Together we conducted a workshop with young artists age 6-14 on the image of the ‘swan’ using my story for the animated film short I am currently working on. What a delight! Their drawings will grace the cover of my SWAN Book V,—the fifth literary installment of SWAN: a poetical inquiry in dance, text & memoir. Take a gander at my slide presentation documenting my stellar days on campus at The Tannery Arts Center with Linda, Athena, Faye, Eli, Nelson, Hannah, June, and Live/Work ARTSPACE artists. 
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CARMELITA MARACCI: THE LEGACY
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On 22 May 2017, former students, students of former students, historians, and ballet aficionados gathered in New York City on a rainy Monday afternoon to share in the remembrances of the life, work, and legacy of renowned dancer and teacher of her Cecchetti-influenced ballet technique,—Carmelita Maracci.
As a student of Carmelita’s—having auditioned and been placed into her adult ballet class at age 12—I too was there, part of a lineage: two of my earliest dance teachers, Joan Chodorow (from age 3-7) and Joan Lawrence (from age 8-12), had both studied with Carmelita. It was understood that my training would thus follow suit. And so it did, through the age of 18. Organized by Elspeth Kuang and Joanne di Vito, and hosted by NYU’s Center for Ballet and The Arts, CARMELITA MARACCI: THE LEGACY became the site for laughter and tears, many, many stories, and viscerally-held memories for those of us who knew her and for those who didn’t, for the few who had seen her dance, and for those who never would. Presenting a panel of luminaries, Virginia Storie Crawford—long-time Maracci student and first owner of the dance studio that later became THE HOUSE, southern California’s formidable 1980’s dance venue—gracefully wove together the legend and the times, deeply moving accounts that were given dimension by guests Allegra Kent, Naomi Sorkin (video), Mary Chipman, and Carmen de Lavallade,—through whom my own dance lineage continued to move forward, having been coached by and having danced several of Carmen’s roles early in my career: Lester Horton’s OROZCO (1975), Donald McKayle’s RAINBOW ROUND MY SHOULDER (1974-76), and McKayle’s reconstruction of the 1954 Broadway musical, HOUSE OF FLOWERS (1986). Carmelita Maracci was born in Goldfield, Nevada, 1908. Though she danced throughout America, she was sought after as the teacher with whom to study in Los Angeles. She died in 1987. I was born in Los Angeles in 1954. I moved to Reno, Nevada in 1987, taking up residence as Director of Dance at the University of Nevada, Reno. Carmelita balked at university life; she did not consider it a worthy environment for a human being’s education. I give it all I’ve got to make it so. |
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FLOOD/Mayim, Mayim (20th Anniversary 1997/2017)Art in indigenous cultures holds particular significance for the people of those cultures. ‘Ritual’ is the timely enactment of that significance,— what modern society commonly calls performance. In ritual, no one is merely a spectator; all present, witnesses and performers alike, are initiates, keepers of the memory of events that have impacted a community in a particular way. Ritual performance maintains the overall health of the community by being a reminder of our place as human beings in nature, in the natural order of things,—refining and elevating human consciousness to be supportive participants in Earth’s phenomenal and interconnected fabric. FLOOD/Mayim, Mayim was made to commemorate such an event. In particular, it celebrated how the people of Reno and surrounding communities were brought together by the 1997 Truckee River flood.
Acknowledging water as a mythic element, I was moved by the people’s responsive and coordinated actions: the state of listening, assessing, and deciphering the tumult of the rising tide; the gathering and distribution of protective sandbags; and how the communal breath attuned itself to the restless rhythm of the elements. The organic admixture was translated through the making and use of rain-sticks, hand-dyed costumes and environmental gear, and the wayward dispersal of unloosed debris. On the occasion of Reno’s 1997 Artown Festival, FLOOD/Mayim, Mayim premiered on the Plaza of The Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts. No one was a mere spectator; audience members responded to the call, arranging sandbags when and where needed. Side-by-side they stood, man, woman, and child, handing one sandbag at a time down their human-formed line, packing them into place. 2017, all is rearranged: the Pioneer Plaza is implanted with iron benches and umbrella’d shades, and a newly constructed Virginia Bridge arcs over the Truckee River. I, along with this community, am a keeper of the memory. |
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University of Nevada, Reno
January - June 2017, Spring Semester
Lecturer, Core Humanities
(CH 202) - The Modern World
January - June 2017, Spring Semester
Lecturer, Core Humanities
(CH 202) - The Modern World
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"The Lecture" drawing by Rosalind Baird; "Lecture Notes on Locke, Rousseau, Freud, and Jung."
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2017 Student Comments: Core Humanities, Spring Semester
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February 16, 17, 18 - 2017
Damonte Ranch High School PAC - Performing Arts Center HIROSHIMA: a crucible of light
Student Performances & Audience Engagement 12-week Artist in Residence: “Cultivating Empathy” Method: The Swan Lectures Practice body, language, perception, poetic image, empathy Reno News & Review - Spe aking their peace
Arts & Culture - February 9, 2017 Students in Damonte Ranch High School’s Performing Arts Center explore empathy in a challenging Japanese play |
Theater students of Damonte Ranch High School in The Swan Practice approach for developing their movement vocabulary for the play, "Hiroshima: a crucible of light"
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March 25, 2017
Tenth International SWAN Day SWAN Day/Support Women Artists Now Day is an international holiday designed to showcase the power and diversity of women’s creativity. The Lighthouse/Studio 5 O 2 hosts its 3rd Swan Day event. |
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July 2017: Black Swans Artist Talk Series
“The Mythopoetic Response” The Lighthouse/Studio 5 O 2 |
Previous Events
“When Word Comes to Flesh: Body and Soul”
Celebrating the history of Toni Morrison’s literary work, Bucknell University Press published Martina Young’s doctoral chapter, “Beloved Bodies: Moving Toward Wholeness,” in the anthology, Toni Morrison: Forty Years in the Clearing (2012). For the 2016 Reno, NV Juneteenth Celebration — “Soul Food” — Martina performs, When Word Comes to Flesh: body and soul, an embodied presentation of her literary commentary on the nourishing quality of “Baby Suggs, holy”—a character in Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Beloved.
Celebrating the history of Toni Morrison’s literary work, Bucknell University Press published Martina Young’s doctoral chapter, “Beloved Bodies: Moving Toward Wholeness,” in the anthology, Toni Morrison: Forty Years in the Clearing (2012). For the 2016 Reno, NV Juneteenth Celebration — “Soul Food” — Martina performs, When Word Comes to Flesh: body and soul, an embodied presentation of her literary commentary on the nourishing quality of “Baby Suggs, holy”—a character in Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Beloved.
SWAN Book 3 ~
Returning from her three-week residency at Arte Studio Ginestrelle, where she developed “Solitude”— the 4th performance installation of her ongoing life project, SWAN: a poetical inquiry in dance, text & memoir, and which premiered at the 2015 International Exhibit of Contemporary Art in collaboration with Albanian poet Mirela Gegprifti at Gallery Le Logge in Assisi, Italy — Martina has received the ongoing support from the Nevada Arts Council with full 2016 funding for her third literary memoir installation.
NAC grants are made possible through funding from the State of Nevada and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Returning from her three-week residency at Arte Studio Ginestrelle, where she developed “Solitude”— the 4th performance installation of her ongoing life project, SWAN: a poetical inquiry in dance, text & memoir, and which premiered at the 2015 International Exhibit of Contemporary Art in collaboration with Albanian poet Mirela Gegprifti at Gallery Le Logge in Assisi, Italy — Martina has received the ongoing support from the Nevada Arts Council with full 2016 funding for her third literary memoir installation.
NAC grants are made possible through funding from the State of Nevada and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Power of Voice
Featuring Dr. L. Martina Young, Dr. Joe Crowley, Mayor Hillary Schieve and Designer Brianna Bullentini
July 9, 2016 at Studio on 4th Street 6-8pm. FREE
You are invited to participate in something unique. A different kind of storytelling session. One part interview. One part storytelling. One part myth.
Read More>>
Featuring Dr. L. Martina Young, Dr. Joe Crowley, Mayor Hillary Schieve and Designer Brianna Bullentini
July 9, 2016 at Studio on 4th Street 6-8pm. FREE
You are invited to participate in something unique. A different kind of storytelling session. One part interview. One part storytelling. One part myth.
Read More>>
