Nuria Martin Fandos is a professional dancer, choreographer and dance educator originally from Barcelona, Spain. She started ballet training at the age of four, but her passion for art of dance may have started even before she had an awareness of it. “My parents have always shared with me that I was the kind of baby that did not want to sleep or eat, and the only solution to calm me down was the sound of Spanish and Flamenco dance that came from the TV,” Nuria explains.
Dance is also a shared generational experience for Nuria, and it’s always been a part of her family. “My grandmother studied Spanish Dance at the same Conservatory that I would study Contemporary Dance years later, and my aunt has always been interested in dance and studied for a long period of her life.”
Nuria received her training at The Royal Academy of Dance (London, UK). “While I was training in classical dance, I started to be curious in other specialties, and I added Spanish Dance, Flamenco, Jazz, and Contemporary to my weekly training,” she recalls. “Having the exposure to many different dance techniques and styles opened my mind to different cultures, music, and movement language and helped me get a better understanding of self that led me to get the Contemporary Dance Degree of Institut del Teatre/CPD in Barcelona.” She later received her Certificate Program in Contemporary Dance at Peridance Capezio Center in New York with a Full Scholarship from the Certamen Intl. Ciutat de Barcelona in 2013.
Nuria admits that being a dancer has its challenges. “The hardest part of being a dancer is the persistence that it takes to get to the place that you thought of yourself as an artist,” she explains. “The energy that is needed every single day to make art, to continue training that we need for our main tool, our body, because this does not stop evolving and we need to continuously train it in the ways that we want to make it operate for our art. The balance between the other “regular” aspects of life like eating schedules, social life, budgeting, planning and organizing and the inspiration and prioritizing the time to create, rehearse and make art.
But along with the challenges of being a dancer comes many rewards. “The most rewarding part of being a dancer is that moment when you step foot on the stage, seconds before the lights go on, where you as a dancer and the audience are met in the same place and time, a moment of stillness, quietness, calm,” Nuria says. “It is almost like you both share the same breathing frequency, the same nerves or expectations about the magic that will happen in just a few seconds.”
Nuria says that her heart starts racing, and her palms start sweating at the five-minute call before the show starts. “I get a bit of tingling from my toes to the tips of my hair but I know, at the bottom of my heart, that these same sensations are the ones that are going to push me to give the best of me on that stage, for that performance and audience,” she says. “These nerves are so strong for maybe less than five minutes, but as soon as I am on the stage and the lights, music, and choreography goes on . . . all of this tingling goes away and my mind and body come together as one so I can proceed with my performance.”
Nuria is also known for her work with MICHIYAYA Dance. “She first began working with the contemporary dance theater company in Fall 2015 before dance became an integral part of the organization. “After the premiere of Project V (5) in the spring of 2016, they created the [dance] company, and they invited me to be one of the founding members. I have been the rehearsal director of MICHIYAYA Dance for three full seasons, performing in hundreds of shows in New York and the Tri-State area.”
Nuria’s encourages aspiring dancers to listen to their heart. She says: “Stop focusing attention on the outsiders, on what people tell you to do, on what the dance world wants you to be.” She believes that every human is already someone special, and we are not meant to follow the path that someone else has chosen. “There is something great in this world waiting for each one of us, as artists and human beings. We just need to give time, research, learn, fall down, and be wrong to find who are we and our professional and personal limits.”
For more information about Nuria, please go to www.nuriamartinfandos.com.
