Meet One of the Honorees of MashUp’s 1st “Exemplary Women in L.A. Dance” Award: Mackenzie Martin
MashUp invited the dance community to nominate women who have displayed inspirational and transformative leadership in the Los Angeles dance industry - one in the nonprofit/concert sector, one in the commercial sector - to receive special recognition, honor, and gratitude. Meet Mackenzie Martin, the Honoree from the commercial sector!
We asked Mackenzie to share a bit about her career journey, what dance means to her, what she envisions for dance in Los Angeles, and more. Thank you Mackenzie for being a positive, energetic, motivating force in this dance community!
Mackenzie Martin
Choreographer, Artistic Director, Founder, and Serial Entrepreneur
Website: mackenziemartininc.com
Social Media Handles: @_mackenzie_martin_
Can you share a bit about your personal dance journey, particularly as a professional in Los Angeles?
My dance career has evolved and shifted over my 12 years in Los Angeles. When I first moved here, I was fortunate that early on I was introduced to and began my journey with a commercial company (FLiRT Dancers directed by Justine Menter. . .turned mentor, turned dear friend) and began working as a commercial heels dancer. It was during that time on FLiRT I realized how profound and grateful I was that in my first several years as a dancer in LA I was surrounded by a community of dancers which gave me lasting friendships and colleagues that I respect and admire to this day. In my late twenties I began to feel an internal shift of where and how I wanted to be dancing, and felt an increasingly deeper desire to focus my training and time on contemporary work which was my true passion and craft. My mounting frustrations from the lack of opportunities contemporary dancers had in LA, full stop, as well as the void of work that was designed outside of the heterosexual male gaze and armed with my experience as a company dancer led me to start my contemporary based company GEOMETRY. My unique experience in working as a commercial dancer grants me a perspective to split the difference between the concert world and commercial industries and because of this my work with GEOMETRY has been focused on creating what I like to call a “hy-bridge” between these two worlds. Seven years ago, this was and (has been) a very difficult task to undertake and was difficult to define in a macro sensibility since it wasn’t widely adopted/accepted (yet). My career as an Artistic Director has been largely seated inside disrupting the ideologies that separate commercial and concert landscapes and creating new solutions to key elements that set them apart as well as fusing the value propositions that unite them. As a working choreographer in LA, this is also true. My work in LA has spanned working for musicians, full length shows, installations in art galleries, music videos, and site specific work. My mission as a creator is to generate movement design in this ether, creating safe and beautiful spaces that blend all the things that charm me together for a less selective, more inclusive, enriched career in dance.
Tell us about what you currently do in the industry.
There are so many beautiful worlds I get to be a part of, and for that I feel so grateful. Currently, GEOMETRY just wrapped a beautiful season that culminated in a production of a dance film which we’ll be releasing soon and we are heading into our 7th season with an incredible new cast of dancers. As the CEO of SOUL DE SOUL Dance Convention my team and I are planning our 13th season and will begin our new “ALIGNED” tour in the fall. I was recently able to produce, direct, and choreograph the music video for “What About Us” for Duomo Musik which is a cover of a Pink song featured in season two of Bridgerton on Netflix. This project has received a lot of love, and since I had the distinct pleasure of assembling this entire cast with my absolute dream team, the success of the video has meant so much more! I also feel really lucky to be teaching at AMDA College of the Performing Arts, and sharing my love of movement with our upcoming generation of dancers. Inside this world I get to stretch into many portals of the way movement exists in LA. I teach contemporary technique and set a lot of choreographic work as well as teaching “Kinetic Storytelling for the Camera” and “Senior Reels”. . .again blending both concert and commercial worlds which I love so much! Last semester I had the honor of directing our fall show “LAVIRRA” which we are currently in post-production on and I can’t wait to share what my incredible cast created during our 13 week process. Post-pandemic, I am spending time rebuilding my open class community and teaching open classes as much as I can. Community is so important to me and I feel like this happens foundationally in the open class sector of our industry, and it’s important for me to show up in/create spaces that celebrate this. Lastly, over the last 10 months I have been working on something that is incredibly close to my heart, that is almost ready to publicly share and my hope is that once it is, it serves and supports our dance ecosystem in tremendous ways!
In your opinion, why does dance matter?
Dance matters to me threefold. Firstly, in principle and at its root, dance is movement. Movement is a part of every single element of our universe because everything is in constant motion. Due to its inherent nature, things that are moving work in harmony and collaboration with the creation and reality we exist within, in other words movement is an agreement with “life”. Secondly, dance matters because it is a form of language (one could argue that it is the most widely used and most commonly understood form of communication at its basic form). Language (when used with care) gifts us tools to build relationships, understand, and commune with one another, it allows societies and communities to evolve and work alongside one another, and language communicates emotion. Language facilitates compassion and empathy. Language problem solves, language provokes change and calls people to action. At its very best, language connects us, and because dance is a universal language, I view dance as the Great Connector. Thirdly, it matters to me because it is one of the only forms of art where our body is the entire facility for the practice. On this earth we are born into this body (which I call our home body) that holds us for our time here. We’re only given one, and (at least in the 21st century) is the only way to experience this life on earth. To really know your home body, means to move it. To really move in it, with it, because of it. To define what movement, what “dance” means to you, to embrace that exploration of movement. . . is really the deepest way to honor your human experience.
What excites you most about dance in LA right now?
We are positioned uniquely and in a tremendous way right now in our LA ecosystem for CHANGE and along with that comes the invitation to build our industry back in more dynamic, healthy, diverse, inclusive, and sustainable ways. Our industry has long been riddled with unfair and poor working conditions and wages, unhealthy metrics and standards of “hustling”, idolization of exhaustion, gatekeepers, selfish interest, lack of mentorship, prioritization of one instead of all, and dare I say it. . .largely steared by a popularity contest off of metrics from social media platforms. I believe we are on the precipice of great change in LA after so many of us are coming back with shifted priorities in response to the pandemic. We have an opportunity to be pilgrims of great change, to shift our culture of dance to higher ideologies, thresholds of accountability, and to challenge one another to work from these places. I believe it’s possible, I know it's needed and I feel the collective desire for us all to build back a better LA dance scene than the one we left pre-pandemic. What excites me about dance in LA right now, is this moment, and to be a part of conversation, leadership, and modeling of these principles and around and in discussion with those who align in this too.
I’m also excited to see how the generation of dancers the pandemic affected most (I believe this to be the generation of students who were graduating, attending/and graduating college during the pandemic) lead our industry in the years to come. Never before has a generation of dance been so affected in this particular way. . .where technology and online learning became such a paramount and crucial part of their training. The implications of this are transformative in the application of their careers, and I have a tremendous suspicion that because of this, this particular generation will lead us to a junction of dance art where technology and movement are amalgamated in such a definitive, innovative, and pioneered form that it transverses the landscape of dance.
What do you envision for the future of dance/dancers in LA?
I envision the future of dance to have more mindful motivation, inclusivity, diversity, and organization of leadership. More collaboration, more partnership, more community. I envision a space that makes this a priority. I envision more opportunities celebrating the vastness of dance movement and movement vocabularies, an industry that moves “dance” forward. . .and not just “talent” and “certain genres”. I envision more uncomfortability, because that’s where great change is born from. I also envision communal and individual success across all platforms and genres of dance, that together we can collectively all work smarter and not harder so that we continue moving the narrative of dance, and the voices of its people forward.
How can people get involved and support that vision?
The power of being a conscious consumer is the most effective way to support any vision. What this means for me, is that once I have a vision. . .or know I want to support one, the mission becomes clear; “how can I be a part of the solution and not the problem?” If we have had enough of unsafe classrooms, then we have to stop showing up in them. If we want to be treated with respect, we have to stop agreeing to jobs and spaces where we’re disrespected. If we want change, we have to stop showing up in spaces and conversations that are closed minded. What we have to do is spend our consumer currency (money, time, alliance, allyship, resources) in support of what IS moving the needle toward the vision we seek. This is our power, and it’s how we take our power back in places we’ve been manipulated into unconscious consumerism. We vote with our dollar. We vote with our time. We vote with our leadership choices. Use your consumer power and resources to help shape the future you want to see for our dance industry. Do some research, chances are there are people around that have been advocating for your values and could use your support. If you don’t see it being modeled. . .that probably means you’re in the unique position to create it yourself, don’t be afraid to be a leader!