BIO­GRA­PHY

Chan­ge has been the con­text and the con­stant in Me­lis­sa’s ar­tis­tic and per­so­nal ex­pe­ri­ence.
Ori­gi­nal­ly from Pe­sa­ro (Ita­ly) Me­lis­sa laye­red her ar­tis­tic iden­ti­ty through ex­ten­si­ve cross-cul­tu­ral ex­pe­ri­en­ces in which mo­ve­ment and em­bo­di­ment play­ed a cen­tral role.

Af­ter gra­dua­ting in 2011 from Nort­hern School of Con­tem­pora­ry Dance in Leeds (UK) she has pur­sued a fruit­ful ca­re­er in Dance and Per­forming Arts both as a free-lan­cer and full-time com­pa­ny mem­ber. Bet­ween 2012 and 2017 she li­ved and worked in Is­tan­bul (Tur­key) as a so­loist for the Is­tan­bul Sta­te Ope­ra and Bal­let, an ex­pe­ri­ence that wi­den­ed her per­spec­tive on the in­ter­na­tio­nal so­cio-po­li­ti­cal land­s­cape and hel­ped her ques­ti­on eu­ro­centric framing with a cri­ti­cal eye.

Me­lis­sa worked also in the free-lan­ce sce­ne tou­ring in­ter­na­tio­nal­ly both as dan­cer and rehe­ar­sal di­rec­tor for many ye­ars, with most re­le­vant col­la­bo­ra­ti­ons in­clu­ding Aa­kash Ode­dra (UK/IN), Cie7273 (CH), Art of Spec­tra (SE) and the Akram Khan Com­pa­ny (UK).
Her pro­fes­sio­nal ex­pe­ri­en­ces mer­ged into a mo­ve­ment prac­tice that Me­lis­sa sha­red through work­shops around Eu­ro­pe, Tur­key, In­dia and Iran.

In 2020 Me­lis­sa mo­ved to Ger­ma­ny whe­re she worked with thea­t­re di­rec­tor Falk Rich­ter and cho­reo­gra­pher Anouk Van Dijk at the Münch­ner Kam­mer­spie­le (DE), whilst con­ti­nuing her free-lan­ce ac­tivi­ty through long-term col­la­bo­ra­ti­ons with fel­low ar­tists like Ro­s­a­na Ri­bei­ro, Gi­zem Aksu and TingAn Ying, and in­sti­tu­ti­ons like Tanz­fa­brik Schu­le in Ber­lin amongst others. 

Me­lis­sa’s ar­tis­tic and pe­dago­gi­cal re­se­arch re­vol­ves around Mind­ful­ness and is in­spi­red by her re­la­ti­ons­hip to Na­tu­re and sustai­na­bi­li­ty, which in­forms her ex­plo­ra­ti­on of bio­me­cha­nics and hu­man ana­to­my. How to co­exist, un­der­stand and in­ter­act with one ano­t­her through mo­ve­ment are pil­lar-the­mes of her pe­dago­gi­cal prac­tice, born from a strong de­si­re to ope­ra­te out­si­de the tra­di­tio­nal dance in­dus­try con­text and ex­plo­re the po­ten­ti­al of de­aling with dance and mo­ve­ment in so­ci­al work and com­mu­ni­ty con­texts.

She is cur­r­ent­ly ba­sed both in Ber­lin and in Frank­furt am Main, whe­re she is a stu­dent of the MA CoDE Pro­gram­me at the Hoch­schu­le für Mu­sik und Dar­stel­len­de Kunst, due to gra­dua­te in July 2026.

Lebenslauf Englisch