During the one month of winter vacation from university teaching, I often responded to an invitation to teach K-12 as an artist-in-residence. One such experience was captured and gifted me as a book of writings and drawings from second-graders at Smith Valley Elementary School in 1988.
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.
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