James Martin

Before Mr. Martin settled in New York City to pursue his dance career, he created a band with James Cowdery called How to Change a Flat Tire. The band played the traditional music of the British Isles.  Listening, researching and delving into the music, musicians, and lore of Ireland, Scotland, England, Shetland and the Hebrides, the band arranged and composed new ways of playing the tunes and designing the songs and ballads. With flutes, fiddle, mandolins, banjo, bouzouki, concertina, vocals, bones and bodhran, the band toured the eastern US and Canada making two albums on Front Hall Records. Coming full circle from that time, Mr. Martin and his new Tyre Isle Band are continuing Mr. Martin’s work researching and reimagining the dance tunes, ballads and Irish Sean-nós tradition of the British Isles.

An accomplished dancer, choreographer and filmmaker as well as musician, Mr. Martin was Associate Arts Professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Dance Department and taught there from 1989 to 2023. In 2020 he won the New York University Tisch School of the Arts David Payne Carter Award for Teaching Excellence.

He has taught at schools and festivals throughout the world including the Mark Morris Monnaie Dance Group in Brussels, the Ballet Academy of Stockholm, the Dansen Hus in Copenhagen, the Université du Québec à Montréal, the Bat Dor School in Tel Aviv, the National Institute of the Arts in Taiwan, the American Dance Festival, The Juilliard School, Princeton University, Wesleyan University, Tulane University, James Madison University, Spectrum Dance School, Seattle and the White Mountain Dance Festival.

He has danced with Donald Byrd/The Group, Gus Solomons jr, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane and Company, Claire Porter, Jamie Cunningham and Tina Croll, Heidi Latsky, The New York Baroque Dance Company and The Connecticut Ballet Company among others.