Martha Connerton
Kinetic Works
Company Director
Martha Connerton, Founding Director of Kinetic Works in Charlotte, NC since 2000, is a choreographer and teacher with an outstanding range of experience. Her training and dancing career included some of the nations finest ballet and modern dance companies which is reflected in her work as a creative artist. She has also choreographed extensively for theater and opera.
Martha has danced with companies including the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Louisville Ballet, The Joyce Trisler Danscompany and American Ballet Comedy. From 1983-1993 she worked as an independent dancer, choreographer and teacher in New York City, producing concerts of her work and dancing with other independent choreographers.
She was the founding director of Martha Connerton and SPHERE, a contemporary dance production organization based in Louisville, Kentucky. She has choreographed works for numerous ballet and modern dance companies, opera and musical theater including American Ballet Theatre II, Louisville Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theatre, Opera Carolina, Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, Davidson College, and Ocean City, NJ Summer on the Pier. In June 1997, Martha was named one of four winners in a national choreography competition sponsored by New York Theatre Ballet. Her works have toured North Carolina with the NC Dance Festival in 1999, 2005, 2008 and 2010.
Photo: Nancy Pierce
In 2000 she formed Martha Connerton/Kinetic Works which receives regular funding from the North Carolina Arts Council and the Charlotte Arts and Science Council. Martha was a two time recipient of the Kentucky Arts Council Al Smith Fellowship in 1985 and1993, a 1996 recipient of the Choreographer’s Fellowship from North Carolina Arts Council, a 2002 and 2018 Recipient of Creative Renewal Fellowships from the Arts and Science Council of Charlotte. She has also received choreography grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, The Kentucky Foundation for Women, Nexus Interdisciplinary Artists Grant Program, the Mary and Barry Bingham Fund, Humana Corp., an Artists Residency Sponsorship from the Indiana Arts Commission and The Harkness Foundation Space Grant at SUNY, Purchase.
Martha has served on the Visiting Artist faculty at UNC-Charlotte, Eastern Carolina, Appalachian State, Winthrop, SC; UNC-Greensboro, Hamilton College, NY; Winona State University, MN; and has guest taught at Bologna Performing Arts Center at Delta State U., MS; Charlotte Community School for the Arts; Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts; Columbia City Ballet; Lexington Ballet; The Ballet School of Charlotte and SUNY Purchase.
From 1993 to 1996 Martha was Director of the School of North Carolina Dance Theatre and Education/Outreach Coordinator for their school programs. She has been a teaching artist for Lincoln Center Institute in New York and currently for the Blumenthal Education Institute in Charlotte. MC/Kinetic Works is on the Artists Rosters of the North and South Carolina Arts Councils, Charlotte/Mecklenburg, Raleigh/Wake, and Fayetteville/Cumberland. Martha has served on the Board of the North Carolina Dance Alliance and Dance Grants Panels for the North Carolina Arts Council and the Arts and Science Council of Charlotte.