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Martha Nishitani (1920-2014) was a prolific dancer, dance teacher, and choreographer in Seattle for over 50 years. Her lifelong passions were dance and teaching, and she pursued both her entire life. Her dance studio was a fixture in Seattle’s University District for almost half a century, and she was a devoted advocate of modern dance her entire life.

She was born in Seattle in 1920, the daughter of Japanese immigrants. Her parents owned a greenhouse and plant nursery in what was then unincorporated King County (now northeast Seattle), fostering in Martha a love of nature. She studied dance with Katharine Wolfe, her Lincoln High School physical education teacher; with Mary Ann Wells at Cornish School; and with Mary Aid de Vries at the University of Washington.

Executive Order 9066 forced Martha, her mother, and five of her ten siblings to be incarcerated in the Minidoka Relocation Camp in Idaho in 1943. After the end of World War II, Nishitani returned to Seattle and resumed her dance career. She met Eleanor King, an original member of Doris Humphrey’s and Charles Weidman’s dance company. King, along with Katharine Wolfe and Maxine Cushing Gray, founded the Northwest Friends of the Dance, a group that was instrumental in furthering dance events and education in Seattle.

Nishitani became King’s student, and performed in her modern dance company from 1946 until 1951, when King left Seattle to take a position at the University of Arkansas. In her absence, Nishitani managed King’s dance school for a few months, but eventually took over the studio’s lease in late 1951 and founded the Martha Nishitani Modern Dance Group. In 1954, Nishitani moved to a new studio on University Way in Seattle’s University District, where it remained until her retirement in 2002.

This was an active period in Nishitani’s life. In 1954, the same year that she opened her own studio, Nishitani also studied at the Connecticut College School of Dance, where she was personally selected by Doris Humphrey to perform one of her works. Also in that same year, Nishitani began a ten-year position at the University of Washington’s Music Department as choreographer, thereby adding that title to her existing roles of performing dancer, teacher, and business owner. She received her Bachelor's Degree in Comparative Arts from the University of Washington in 1958, where she was also an artist in residence.

Nishitani’s dedication to teaching, passion for dancing, and public support for modern creative dance were constant during her long career. She received numerous accolades for her teaching and modern dance advocacy from various regional and national organizations. Of the ten Nishitani siblings, Martha was the only one that did not marry or have children; her students, her choreography and her dance work, her lasting effects on her local and larger arts communities, and her personal papers are her legacy. Nishitani passed away in 2014, at the age of 94.