This work was created to commemorate how the communities of Reno, Sparks, and Carson City rallied in support of all of its residents and businesses during what has been termed “the 100-year flood.” It was my largest and most ambitious work to date with 15 dance performers; making the rain sticks; dyeing and fitting the costumes, including acquiring appropriate hand, leg, and footwear for outdoor performance; writing the grant; informing emcee, Reno-based comedian, David (last name unknown) of the work, . . . . Rehearsals began spring of 1997; summer performance premiered for Reno’s moth-long ARTOWN Arts Festival, July 1997.
FLOOD/Mayim, Mayim is structured by 9 sections: I) Mercury Falling – the divining, rain; II) Mikveh (ritual bath) – rolling on the river, no boundaries/no quarter; III) Mayim, Mayim (water, water) – angels of lightning, wall of breath; IV) Mitzvah (gift, good deed) – passion, the last wave, fin (Man Who Walks on Water).
L. Martina Young is a dance artist, writer-orator, myth scholar, Somatics Educator. Originally from Los Angeles, Martina is a multi-year NEA Fellow (1983-85) and recipient of Nevada’s Governor’s Arts Award for Excellence in the Arts (2008). For 22 years she has maintained a radical hospitality space at her artist loft in the arts district of downtown Reno, NV bringing community residents, civic leaders, and artists together. Her essay, “FLOOD/Mayim, Mayim”—on her aesthetic process of unpacking the mythic imagery of ‘water’ for her 1997 community-interactive performance work FLOOD—was published in Mark Curtis’s book, One Of A Kind: The People and Places That Make Reno The Biggest Little City in the World (2019). Martina was chosen by Stevie Wonder to be the solo dancer in his 1983 music video, Ribbon in the Sky. She’s also the soloist in Julie Dash’s 1977 award-winning film, Four Women, which she choreographed to Nina Simone’s searing song of the same title.
