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