Clara Martinez: Empowered through dance

In Clara Martinez’s life, there have been a number of experiences and moments that very clearly led her to who she is today: the dance director at Everett High School since 2017, the chair of the school’s Visual & Performing Arts Department, and now a two-time winner of Best Dance Instructor in City Pulse’s Top of the Town contest.

The first few of those experiences came when she was a young child.

“My dad was a sociologist, so I grew up thinking about society as a whole,” she said. “The question at the kitchen table at the end of every day was, ‘What have you done for somebody else, and how are you in service for other people?’”

At the same time, Martinez loved to express herself, and dance was the vehicle.

“My mom always told a story of me doing this hula hoop dance while three to four other kids were crying on stage. I was smiling and loving it. I’ve always been a dancer.”

Martinez said it took her a while to figure out how to marry those two things: growing up dancing and being expressive, while having a familial duty to serve others. “How do those things come together?” she asked herself.

When her family moved to East Lansing after her freshman year of high school, Martinez immersed herself in dance but also things like Model United Nations. She discovered the local dance company Happendance and eagerly joined.

“It totally changed my perspective on how to be a working artist and made dances about real things. That’s why I feel so passionately about student choreography at the high school level. It’s really the place you can find your voice in a way that maybe you haven’t gotten the opportunity to do yet.”

After graduating, she attended Ohio State University, which has one of the top three public-school dance programs in the country. Then, her mother died during her senior year.

“So, instead of moving to New York and becoming a modern dancer, I decided to come home and just get my footing and be close to my family,” she said. “That’s when my whole world changed, and I feel like I found myself.”

Raymond Holt for City Pulse

Raymond Holt

“I was always fascinated with Lansing,” she added. “From when we moved here in 2007, I really couldn’t get away from it in a lot of ways.”

At first, Martinez was a teaching artist with short-term residencies at Lansing elementary schools. She was “amazed” by that experience.

“I loved the conversation about how we can make dance more accessible, how we can take these concepts of high art and give them back to the people they belong to,” she said.

She also worked for AmeriCorps VISTA, which she said brought her back to the question, “What are we doing for each other, as opposed to my being a dancer and making art for myself?”

The Everett position opened up in 2017 when program founder Karen Sprecher retired. Martinez made sure she was ready to do justice to Sprecher’s legacy.

“Karen and I had coffee a lot that summer, and I met with alumni and current students,” she said. “I learned that I was coming into a place that is beloved. All I have to do is facilitate and provide opportunity for it to continue to elevate itself and make sure the students feel supported to be artistically free.”

In 2024, Martinez celebrated the 50th anniversary of the dance program with her students in a renovated dance studio she calls “world-class.” The district also produced a documentary on the program.

Despite her busy role at Everett, Martinez was able to go back to school for three years, earning a master of social work from Michigan State University to enhance her ability to work holistically with her students.

“Social work is all about agency, all about empowerment, all about dignity of the person first,” Martinez explained. “If I want you to express yourself in dance, I have to acknowledge the preciousness of your dignity and honor that. Then I can give you the tools to express yourself, to feel safe, yet be challenged and grow.”

To the many other hats she wears, Martinez aspires to add Lansing City Council at-large member. She became a candidate in this fall’s election, she says on her website, “because I believe leadership should be about listening, advocating, and fighting for the people who make Lansing great.”