N.C. dancer shows her street creds on MTV

When Elizabeth Triplett Martin first decided in college to become a hip-hop dancer, her mother, Cary Stevens, was surprised.

"I thought, 'Hip-hop? You're 5 feet 10 inches and white!"' Stevens recalled. "I was a little taken aback, but this one has always surprised me. I always support my kids, whatever they do."

Jason Croom, one of the founders of the Atlanta hip-hop dance group Swagger Crew, was also surprised when a fellow crew member, Allan Skeene Jr., told him about meeting Martin at an audition.

"He said, 'There's this white girl who hits it really hard,"' Croom said. When she auditioned for the crew and he saw her dance, he said, "It was a no-brainer."

"You're looking at a tall, lanky white girl with the sweetest personality in the world," he said. "Then when the music comes on, you see her facial expression change, and she puts her whole energy into it."

Martin joined Swagger Crew, which performs at various events and competitions. They are among the contestants on America's Best Dance Crew, the MTV competition series produced by Randy Jackson of American Idol fame. In the series, dance crews from around the country compete for a $100,000 grand prize and the Golden B-Boy (breakdancer) trophy.

Swagger Crew made the first round of competition on Jan. 28 in an episode that will be repeated at 10 a.m. Feb. 18. Starting at 10 Feb. 18 on MTV, they will be one of nine teams performing in the finals.

"It doesn't surprise me," her father, Bob Martin, said of her success. "She could always dance any way she wanted. She took ballet, tap and jazz."

There are 13 members in Swagger Crew nine men and four women. Martin is the only white member of the group, which has a mix of black, Asian, and Hispanic members, Croom said. And Martin is the only woman among the six members of the team that is performing on MTV. The others are on tour or in school.

When Croom and Skeene were assembling the members for Swagger Crew, they "didn't want to be all male," Croom said.

Croom is originally from Brooklyn, but lived in Atlanta. "We wanted to let people know what Atlanta has to offer," he said. "We decided to pull together a team from the resources of local dancers there." The crew was formed in summer of 2007, and Martin joined toward the end of that year.

One of the keys to Martin's success, Croom said, was her emphasis on the craft.

For female dancers, he said, "a lot of gigs are to be sexy and pose. But she's a dancer, she wanted to dance, and be able to represent herself by dancing, not just being pretty all the time."
Elizabeth Martin, who turns 27 on Monday, has been dancing since she was about 5. She and her fraternal twin sister, Kristen, went to the Academy of Dance Arts on Hawthorne Road.

"My mom just put me in classes and I fell in love with it," she said by phone from Los Angeles, where she was rehearsing for tonight's performance. "It's a form of expression for me, it's a good outlet.... My parents split when I was 12, and I found a lot of release in it (dancing)."

And she found a lot of inspiration from her teachers at the academy.

"Debbie (Sayles), my tap teacher, really inspired me because tap was the closest thing they had to hip-hop. It kind of had that flavor to it," Martin said. "She's super good."

Sayles has fond memories of her time teaching Martin.

"She's one of those students who stand out," Sayles said. "I loved teaching her. She's the kind of student you miss when she's gone.... She and her sister were wonderful on stage; they had this great stage presence."

Martin first became fascinated with hip-hop at age 11 when she saw the movie Breakin'.

"I thought, that is what I want to do," she said, and she began doing the "Robot" dance in the hallways for fellow students at Summit School, which she was attending at the time.

She attended the dance academy through her high-school years and spent her senior year of high school at UNC School of the Arts, though she studied singing because she planned at that time to pursue a career as a vocalist.

Martin then attended Belmont University in Nashville, where after spending a year in France she got a degree in French and music business. She also rekindled her love of hip-hop.

After college, she moved to Atlanta. In addition to dancing, she paints and restores furniture, which she sells at the Atlanta store Paris on Ponce where she works, and where she puts her French degree to use working with artists in France. She also sells her work online through her blog, www.saintrooster.com.

"Mom is an artist," she said. "And I've always enjoyed it, but never thought I would do it."

Her sister, Kristen Martin Kluttz, is an art teacher at Mineral Springs Middle School.

"I was more the ballerina and she was more the jazz dancer," Kluttz said. "It fits her personality very well. We're very, very different. I was more reserved, I stayed in Winston, and she lived in France for a year. She's very outgoing, always loved to entertain people."

Their two brothers are in the performing arts, one of them playing bluegrass and the other performing stand-up comedy. Their two stepsisters and stepbrother are also artistically inclined, as is their stepfather, Bill Stevens, a composer.

"She's an artist in a family of artists," Cary Stevens said. She is surprised, but pleasantly so, that her daughter is still dancing.

"I keep thinking she'll age out of this, but she keeps it up," she said. "She's a firecracker, and always has been. She's never been any trouble, but always full of surprises and full of determination."

Her father, a commercial real-estate appraiser in Winston-Salem, is also happy with her success.

"She's out there having a blast, and that's what I want," he said. "As long as she has fun, that's great.... I'm a proud daddy, I can tell you that."

Kluttz said she is encouraging her students and fellow teachers to watch the show and vote for her sister's crew.

"It's a big to-do over here at Mineral Springs," she said.

Tim Clodfelter writes for the Winston-Salem Journal