eMartin Dance

eMartin Dance creates productions that inspire audience discourse and empower community members. More than dancers, we are active citizens that use dance as a form of action to impact the world through performance and community outreach.

Blood of the Earth (2025) | Photos by Stan Waldhauser

About eMartin Dance
Located in Mni Sota Makoce since 2019, eMartin Dance brings contemporary dance into conversation with community, identity, and place. Led by founder and Artistic Director Erika Martin, our work explores human experience and identity politics through innovative choreography that asks how art can be a catalyst for empathy and change.

Through performance, education, and outreach, we create spaces where audiences and artists meet through shared experience. Each production blends artistry and inquiry, engaging with themes that connect us across backgrounds and generations.

Why support eMartin Dance this year?
We are a small yet active local arts organization dedicated to paying equitable wages to the dance, music, and production artists we collaborate with. 

In 2026 we are building two new performances:

• Freedom ID — exploring the historic and contemporary landscape of voting rights in the US
• Bubblegum for Your Eyes — a light hearted satirical ballet: one part bubble wrap, two parts synchronized swimming.

Your generosity directly supports the development of these new projects and sustains our ability to provide fair pay to the artists and collaborators who make this work possible.

Education & Outreach
Alongside our creative process, we are expanding Empowered Movement, our trauma-informed dance program that offers community workshops focused on healing, embodiment, and expression through movement. These sessions create inclusive spaces for participants of all backgrounds to explore the connection between body and resilience.

We are also thrilled to partner with Amez Dance to organize professional development seminars for early-career dance business leaders in the Twin Cities, strengthening the future of our local dance community.

Recent Highlights
In 2025, we premiered Blood of the Earth — an evening-length work inspired by Southern landscapes and histories. The piece invited audiences to reflect on how land, identity, and community shape our shared experience.

As a thank you for your continued support during Give to the Max 2025, we are making Blood of the Earth available on demand this November.

🎁 When you give $30 or more before November 20, you will receive exclusive access to stream Blood of the Earth from home.

Thank you for supporting Dance in Action.

Your support helps eMartin Dance continue creating meaningful work that connects people through movement and dialogue. 

When you give, you invest in:

• Equity — Expanding access to the arts by ensuring representation, inclusion, and opportunity for artists and audiences of all backgrounds.
• Sustainability — Supporting long-term creative development and organizational growth so that independent dance can thrive in Minnesota for generations to come.
• Community Impact — Making dance a platform for civic engagement, education, and healing through programs like Empowered Movement.
• Living Wages for Artists — Providing fair, equitable compensation for the dancers, musicians, and production artists who bring our work to life.

Together, these values guide every step of our creative process and ensure that Dance in Action is more than a slogan — it is a practice rooted in care, accountability, and creativity.