2023-2024 Dance Lab Resident

Gina Marte (she/her) is a multifaceted Dominican artist from Lawrence, MA, whose work focuses on sensuality and expresses that through different modes of storytelling. Dancing since the age of 10, she has trained in many styles such as hip-hop, ballet, contemporary, popping, house, African dance styles, jazz, and more in Lawrence, Boston, and Los Angeles. She is interested in immersing herself in as many styles and expanding her movement journey.

Gina’s performance and collaboration credits include Pictures in Concrete (MA), Crewnex (MA), KreativMindz (CA), Art UnEarths (MA); and projects with Shaquan Reed, Jaheem Alleyne, Gustavo Polanco, Jeryl Palana, and Ella Wechsler-Matthaei. In her time in Los Angeles, CA, she had the opportunity to perform and work with Kanye West, Stephanie Zelaya, and Refinery29.

Gina recently was an Artist in Residence for the Lawrence Arts Collective (2023) where she got to host two free dance intensives for the Lawrence dance community from incredible dance artists and teachers from Lawrence and Boston. She also created a show called “Los Caminos en Mis Sueños” that depicted the impact of dreams in our lives. Dreams help us sort out and understand our memories and also the questions and thoughts that occupy us. The show featured beautiful dreams and nightmares through movement, music, and poetry.

She holds an BA in English from the University of Massachusetts-Boston and is currently submerging herself in training, creating, and performing. Gina is focused on evolving and impacting as many lives as possible with her art.

Project Description

“Los Caminos en Mis Sueños”

Throughout her Dance Lab residency, Gina will further develop and expand her project “Los Caminos en Mis Sueños” that depicts the impact of our dreams. Often, dreams help us sort out and understand our memories and the questions and thoughts that occupy us. “Los Caminos en Mis Sueños” takes the audience through our wildest nightmares to our sweetest dreams and was first shared publicly in June 2023 at the Essex Art Center in Lawrence, MA.

Artist’s Project Statement

“The first chapter of this work was created in residency with the Lawrence Arts Collective and featured a cast of 2 dancers and 3 sets to create a dreamlike ambience. The sets took the audience through what rock bottom could look like evolving into what it feels like to be healed. Each set had a piece of furniture and wire structure attached that recreated the tangible spaces I’ve been in at certain moments in my life with the wire structure resembling the twists and turns I feel in dreams and nightmares. All of the furniture has been sanded and painted by me and I have 200 ft of armature wire covered in black pex pipe that were formed in the designed journey by my partner Michael Romero and I.”

“The next chapter of “Los Caminos en Mis Sueños” will take my research a step further and explore the relationship between lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis. I chose these two topics within dreaming because I experienced both of these states myself and want to explore what that may look like in movement. To further expand my research, I also want to include the history of the conflict between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Although I don’t know much about the conflict, I do know that it still impacts the island today. Including this in my research allows me to learn more about the phenomenon that in any dispute, people have anticipated multiple outcomes in these scenarios. With lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis, those experiences have instance awareness of what’s going on and what can and/or will happen. I can imagine in any conflict, day in and day out, so much occurs. Individuals during that time most likely dreamt about what’s going on and what the next day would look like. Researching these two topics within dreaming would allow me to be more educated of those experiences as well as enrich my history of my parents’ country, Dominican Republic.”

“The Dance Lab Residency has invited me to dive deeper into the science of dreaming and the history of the Dominican Republic and Haiti and to create an experience that’s interactive and informational. My goal is to learn, explore, and expand this piece of work. This project means the world to me because I know this is something everyone can relate to, and it can impact everyone.”