Life & Work with Marla Leela Martin

Today we’d like to introduce you to Marla Leela Martin.

Hi Marla Leela, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started BellyDancing right after my 12-year-old daughter and I attended a mother/daughter henna tattoo party with some friends. It was all women and girls, lots of beautiful music and mysterious, magical decor, and the henna artist brought a beautiful BellyDancer to entertain us. She had us all up, dancing in a circle, swaying and laughing, twirling colorful silk veils and playing finger cymbals. It was enchanting! I was hooked. Every cell in my body cried out “YES! This! THIS!!!” I started taking BellyDance classes that very week, at Glendale Community College. In a year, I had created a dance troupe and we began performing, I accepted a teaching position at a local dance studio, and then another studio, the YMCAs, then Caltech University, and Glendale Parks and Recreation….it just snowballed from there! I began producing BellyDance Fantasy Theatrical events in Hollywood that showcased both local dance artists, and internationally famous performers from all over the world. Our events combined all sorts of whimsical delights, including Bollywood, Samba Queens, Live Rock Bands, Drum Circles, Burlesque, Fire and Aerial performers, Contortionists, Circus acts, Stiltwalkers and a thousand other things. I now teach the BellyDance program at Glendale Community College as well!!

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Hahahahahah great question! Well, aside from becoming a dance professional, performer and teacher at the age of 38 (!), I suppose the road has been fraught with a lot of joy and some disappointment. Much more joy, though. The women (and men) who have come to my classes in the last 25 years are there for a multitude of reasons, and learning to BellyDance is only one of them. There is a deep sense of community, of shared delight, and of support. BellyDance does not discriminate: it is the Dance of the Essential and Sacred Feminine, ready to embrace all sizes, shapes, colors, creeds, races and ability levels. The experience leaves the students glowing with accomplishment and self-confidence, and also sweat! It’s very physical, and offers access to that Mind-Body-Spirit thing that makes us hummmmmmm with well-being!

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I teach a very classical form of BellyDance called Raqs Sharki. It is very elegant and expressive and offers every dancer an opportunity to go deep within to source her own story through the dance. That being said, I like to mix things up, add lots of fabulous costumes and cultures, tell stories through dance in 5 or 10 minutes and leave our audiences laughing, applauding and talking about our shows for weeks! Over the years, I have created BellyDance story versions of Alice in Wonderland, West Side Story, Chicago, James Bond Movies, Bikini Beach Movies, Dream Sequences that span the globe in the search for a hidden, sacred shrine, Martini-themed pageantry with a Busby Berkeley choreography style and hundreds of other slightly insane mash ups! We use music from all over the world, costuming inspired by theater, books, movies and our own wild imaginations, and props and scenery that we dream up and create together as a troupe. Rehearsal cycles are intense, jam-packed and lots of fun, with great camaraderie, support for the newer dancers, lots of homemade treats and birthday parties for all the dancers! We are a dancing ‘family’ with an open door policy, and we share an exciting vision of just how much fun we can have, sweating and drilling and changing costumes 1,000 times!

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Making a career out of BellyDancing is a pretty risky business! Especially in an economic climate that continues to downtrend, making discretionary spending choices more difficult by the day for all of us. Starting in 2008, people started funding necessities like food, gas, health insurance and rent instead of dance classes and tickets to BellyDance shows, so I scaled everything down. I continued to teach, people really needed the release of exercise and dance class, and began producing smaller shows in local venues. When the pandemic hit and everything came to a grinding halt, I began teaching on Zoom immediately, to provide that much-needed connection between people, some exercise, some laughs and also to keep my performance troupe together and thriving. I decided to provide these classes for free, with donations welcome, so that all the dancers who had lost work during COVID could continue to dance. I am still providing free Zoom classes because COVID is not over, we have not recovered, and the experience of dancing together, even over the internet, is more healing than I can express.

Pricing:

• BellyDance Classes: $20/class
• Zoom Classes: FREE!

Contact Info:

• Website: LeelaBellydance.com
• Instagram: @leelabellydance
• Facebook: Marla Leela Martin
• Youtube: @leelabellydance