Faculty

Award-winning choreographer Lee Martino has choreographed for stage, screen and TV. Her work spans all disciplines as evidenced by her credits including Jenny Craig’s national TV commercial featuring Jason Alexander, Baring It All; Target web commercials featuring Kristen Bell and others for the East Coast’s National Bank; the two-hour NBC television special Shall We Dance on Ice, featuring Broadway dancers and Olympic Ice Dance teams; the animated feature films The King and I (Warner Bros.) and Alpha and Omega 3D (Lionsgate); Joe DiPietro’s Falling for Eve for The York Theatre Company in Manhattan; Rita Moreno’s one-woman show Life Without Makeup at Berkeley Repertory Theatre; and the opening number for the Writers Guild of America Awards performed by Modern Family's Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

Her other stage credits include the 2016 Dreamgirls Reunion at Los Angeles’ John Anson Ford Amphitheatre with Jennifer Holliday, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Loretta Devine, the actresses who starred in the original Broadway production; Sam Harris’ Ham: A Musical Memoir (Pasadena Playhouse); Carrie (Los Angeles Theatre and La Mirada Theatre for McCoy Rigby); First Date (McCoy/Rigby); When You Wish, the Story of Walt Disney (Phoenix Theatre); American Misfits (Boston Court); Oklahoma!, Hairspray and many more for Musical Theatre West; Hello My Baby (Rubicon Theatre); Life Could Be a Dream (McCoy/Rigby, Ogunquit); and Kiss of the Spider Woman (Bootleg Theatre). Martino was the resident choreographer for Los Angeles’ Reprise Theatre Company under the artistic direction of Jason Alexander. Choreography for Reprise includes Li’l Abner, starring Cathy Rigby; Carousel, On Your Toes, Damn Yankees, On the Town, Brigadoon, I Love My Wife and Kiss Me Kate, among others.

Live events and shows include direction and choreography for Les Girls, a benefit starring some of the industry’s biggest stars; direction and choreography for the Alzheimer’s benefit A Night at Sardi’s, starring the cast of The Big Bang Theory, among other celebrities; direction and choreography for What a Pair, benefitting the John Wayne Cancer Institute; and direction and choreography for large-scale industrial shows for Harley-Davidson.

Other work includes choreography for Seth Rogen’s Hilarity for Charity, starring Courtney Love, Walk the Moon and James Franco; Nickelodeon, Universal Studios, Disney’s Santa Clause 3 Stage Show at Hollywood’s El Capitan Theatre; Disney International’s Latin American Stage Tour A Dream Is a Wish, originating in Mexico City; Theatre Under the Stars’ (TUTS) Hobby Center for the Performing Arts Gala Opening honoring Jerry Herman; the opening of Ford Field, the Detroit Lions’ football stadium, starring Gladys Knight and Deborah Gibson; the opening of the Spa Resort Casino in Palm Springs, starring Natalie Cole; Actor’s Fund benefits; the S.T.A.G.E. benefit, Los Angeles’ longest running AIDS benefit for AIDS Project Los Angeles; and CHOC Children’s Hospital events, which have raised more than $10 million to date.

Martino also directs and choreographs The Lyric Project, a program working with ASCAP to pair emerging young lyricists with professional composers to create and present new works.

She has won four Los Angeles Ovation Awards, three Los Angeles Drama Critics Awards and is the recipient of the Joel Hirschhorn Award for Outstanding Achievement in Musical Theatre. Martino has a master’s degree in dance. In addition to teaching at UCLA TFT, she is on the adjunct faculty of Mount San Antonio Community College.