Marin Elizabeth Leggat

YA Profile Information

Full Name

Marin Elizabeth Leggat

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First Year in YA's

1996

Years in YA

1996-98

Role in Group

Dancer/Dance Captain

Director(s)

Randy Boothe, Rebecca Wright Phillips

Residence

Provo, Utah, USA

Family

single, but a ton of awesome brothers/sisters/parents/nieces and nephews!!!

Profession

Dance Educator, Choreographer

Other

Like many of you, my experience in Young Ambassadors lit a fire in me to try to continue doing missionary-related work through the arts around the world.

In 2003, after finishing my Masters' degree in Dance, I declined an offer to head the dance department at Texas A&M to accept a job teaching Performing Arts at an international school in Sri Lanka. For $700/month! ...and would you believe that some of the first connections I made when arriving on this tropical island halfway around world would be with FORMER HOST FAMILIES of the Young Ambassadors when they toured in 1986?!? The principal of my school, Goolbai Gunesekara, remembered Randy, and the Young Ambassadors who stayed with her 17 years earlier!

In 2005, I moved to NYC and began M.E.L.D. Danceworks, a modern dance company committed to "dissolving religious and cultural barriers through the art of dance" (sound familiar, former YA's???) My work in NYC opened a door to serve as a U.S. Cultural Ambassador to India in 2008, where I choreographed a 30-minute dance about faith on a professional dance company in Mumbai, and worked with the Seva Sadan Girls' School and Orphanage.

I know that my experience as Dance Captain during two tours with Young Ambassadors helped prepare me to be able to step into these kinds of situations and share the gospel through dance. I remember our tour bus pulling up to work with children from the slums of Soweto in Johannesburg, or with a group of 70 young women wearing plaid school uniforms, or with a class of 12-year old boys bursting with energy. After a quick pow-wow to assess the situation, we'd be thrown into teaching 20- to 90-minute workshop sessions. I think I learned how to be flexible, how to be creative (pulling out a bag of candy for street children and guiding a creative movement experience about MARSHMALLOWS, POP ROCKS and JAWBREAKERS!) and how to be optimistic in spite of the unexpected circumstances we found ourselves in. What treasured memories!

I still have my NYC-based company, but have moved to Provo to teach Modern and MDT classes back at BYU. I'm especially thrilled to be working to establish connections between the dance department and India/Sri Lanka through study abroad programs and faculty exchanges.

I believe the arts can open doors for missionary work in places around the world where the church is still young or not recognized. I hope to always be involved in this kind of work, thanks to the influence of Young Ambassadors.

History

Member for

1 year 51 weeks

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