Newport
On any given week, it’s likely the 16-year-old Newport High junior is working on both. By his count, his dance card is filled with about a dozen classes a week; when he’s not honing that craft, Martell is running the Newport halls in preparation for another season of hurdling for the Tigers’ track and field team.
One discipline brought recent success. Thanks to a scholarship won at a spring competition, Martell landed a spot with Texas-based Spirit of America Productions to perform in last month’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. The week in Gotham helped Martell network with dance professionals, take masters classes in other dance styles and experience a unique accomplishment in a unique pursuit.
The other discipline could bring success soon. College track programs are beginning to notice Martell, who finished second in the 110-meter hurdles at last spring’s NHIAA Division III outdoor state meet and who has sliced more than a second off his time since his freshman campaign.
Dance and track both hold Martell’s heart. He does both well. He’s drawn praise and admiration in both. How does a guy choose?
Simple: He doesn’t. Not yet, at least.
“He’s just tremendous,” Newport High athletic director Jeff Miller recently said. “If we had to pick a kid as the model student for Newport Middle High School, it would be a kid like Mason. He’s great in school. He’s great in the community. He’s great with his peers. You’d have a hard time finding anybody who’d have anything bad to say about him.”
As a dancer, Martell stands out.
He’s the rare teenage male attempting, enjoying and succeeding at what’s largely a female-driven artistic and athletic pursuit. For instance, out of more than 600 fellow dancers in the Spirit of America Macy’s routine last month, Martell was one of only about five boys involved, by his estimate.
It all goes back to kindergarten.
“My mom’s friend had a daughter who was the same age as me; she was interested in ballroom dancing, and she asked if I wanted to try it,” Martell recalled during a recent interview at the high school. “At first I didn’t really want to, but I stuck with it and I fell in love with ballroom, so I’ve been doing that for a really long time.
“As my career in ballroom expanded, I met people that did regular competition dance. I started with tap first, and I’ve always had a gymnastics background, so it was natural to try other styles of dance. From that, I started jazz, modern, contemporary, ballet, hip-hop — like, every style.”
Martell trains with Newport’s Stardancer Studios dance company these days, doing his solo work with Kyla White, the studio’s former owner and ongoing coach. The two have worked together on technique and choreography the past three years.
“He has a lot of natural ability,” White said on Thursday. “He’s been working a lot on technique in the last year; he just started ballet two years ago, so most of what you see and have seen is all natural ability. We’ve been working more, focusing more on technique. When I first got to know him, I just saw a lot of natural ability that needed to be shaped and formed, kind of controlled.”
Of all dance forms, contemporary is Martell’s favorite, and it’s what produced his Macy’s opportunity. As part of winning a March competition in Springfield, Mass. — with a solo routine arranged to a cover of the Chris Isaak song Wicked Game — Martell earned a scholarship from a Toronto-based group, Be Discovered, to be one of a dozen boys and girls to join the Spirit of America performance. The $2,000 award helped cover a chunk of the expense of a week in New York filled with rehearsals, classes and networking.
“We did masters classes in our free time, and the rest of the time we were with Spirit of America rehearsing,” Martell said. “We rehearsed at the New York Hilton in this humongous ballroom, usually 3½-4 hours long. It was a lot of repetition, a lot of doing the little details until we all looked exactly the same. It was a real-world professional experience.”
The day of the parade brought its own challenges.
The Be Discovered group stayed in a different hotel from Spirit of America and had to walk for 20 minutes at 5 a.m., in full costume, to the Hilton for a final rehearsal. Traveling en masse — “We all got on subway together, which was a very funny sight, 700 dancers on the subway in full costume and makeup,” Martell said — the team reassembled at a museum and waited for several hours before heading outdoors.
The group would end up walking six miles altogether on one of the coldest New York Thanksgiving days on record.
“In a small town, we all know each other,” Martell said. “I had a lot of posts on Facebook about me, a lot of attention on social media, which is really funny. A lot of my teachers from school and friends said they saw me. I made some good friends in New York, and we’re keeping in touch.
“Now I’m getting back into the swing of starting track training and getting ready for dance competitions.”
As a hurdler, Martell is beginning to stand out.
The same perfectionist tendencies he applies to his dancing have found their way into his running. The two activities complement each other: Both require flexibility, leaping ability, balance, endurance and work beyond what coaches and teammates see.
“Dance and track are both very direct in what you put in and your results, which I love that part,” Martell said. “I love the hard work of it. I also think both of them are very important about how much work you put in when no one’s watching. You can work as hard as you want in practice, but it’s the meet that matters. If you don’t work hard in practice, you won’t show up at the meet.”
Newport Recreation Department director P.J. Lovely turned Martell into a hurdler when the youngster joined in the town’s summer Hershey track program years ago. Martell would go on to set Newport Middle School records in the long jump and 110 hurdles; he has repeatedly broken the high school mark in the latter, most recently posting a time of 15.03 seconds at last June’s NHIAA Meet of Champions.
“His flexibility is off the charts, because of dance,” said Lovely, who is also Newport’s high school outdoor track and field coach. “He takes seriously what he puts into his body; he treats it like a temple, takes care of it, stretches all the time, so he’s always flexible. As soon as he started hurdling, he was a perfect fit.”
Martell has been on a quickening curve ever since. Seventh as a freshman in the 110 hurdles at D-III states (16.33 seconds), Martell jumped to second at last May’s meet, his 15.65 time behind only Portsmouth Christian’s Fiston Kapongo (15.56). A week later, Martell (15.07) outraced Kapongo (15.34) in the Meet of Champs final, something Lovely considers significant. Martell also came within four places and about a quarter of a second from making the 110 hurdles final at New Englands in June.
“He kept improving, and his times kept going down,” Lovely noted. “He could go mid- to low 14s by his senior year, which is super-fast.”
This is the start of Martell’s busy season. Winter track, more low-key than outdoors, occupies some of his time. Dance, with its January-to-May competition schedule, takes up much of the remainder. Martell won’t let himself slack off in either.
“People don’t realize the more ‘sport’ side of dance, how much of a team effort it is to be up on the dance team,” Martell said. “Dance is actually one of the most ‘team’ indoor sports, because you have to be completely connected to the person next to you, doing the same exact thing at the same exact time, but you have to be connected emotionally. I think that’s one thing I love about dance.
“Track is pretty focused, and in track I’m in my track mindset, and there’s no interpretation of how I’m feeling. I just have to go to work. In dance, I can perform depending upon my emotion.”
Junior year is the time high school athletes start to draw serious attention from college coaches. Martell is no different. Because his results are easily found by anyone with a search engine, Martell can expect to get letters from schools seeking his hurdling skills.
Beyond that, Martell is an excellent student — Miller said he’s top-three in the junior class — and has other activities in his life, including student council and the school newspaper. Colleges would be happy to snap up such a candidate.
“He’s made so many connections, going to the Macy’s parade, that are probably available to him,” said Miller, who also is Newport’s indoor track coach. “I do know he’s very serious about working on track, and maybe that can be an avenue. … I’ve seen him dance at the (Newport) Opera House; he’s done some Dancing With the Stars stuff. He’s fantastic.”
New York opened Martell’s eyes to dance’s possibilities, but he also understands its limitations.
“Some of it is the unknown,” he admitted. “There are so many people, and there’s always somebody better than you. The professional world of dance is very cutthroat. You can be cut for not looking a certain way. There are aspects you can’t control. … In dance, your body is your instrument. If you get injured, there are only so many things you can do. For a lot of people, that’s the end of their career.”
Martell is leaning toward pre-med for a college major, with dance as a minor. Track may ultimately figure into the mix. He and White can joke with each other about their lives; White hurdled at Springfield High when she was her pupil’s age.
“I’ve said 100 times that he’s so fun to work with,” White said. “As a dance teacher, every once in a while you get someone like Mason, who has the energy, the positivity, the talent and is nice and refreshing to work with. … If we really get him some exposure, he could earn a lot of scholarships and have a lot of opportunities. I’m hoping that’s what he does.”
That’s why Mason Martell’s gotta run. And he’s gotta dance.
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.