Jodi Melnick

Undergraduate Discipline

Dance

Graduate Program

MFA Dance Program

BFA, State University of New York–Purchase. Choreographer, performer, and teacher. A 2012 Guggenheim fellow and recipient of the Jerome Robbins New Essential Works grant (2010-2011), a Foundation for Contemporary Arts award, 2011 Grants to Artists award, and two Bessies (2001 and 2008). Her dances have been performed at The Joyce Theatre and City Center in New York City; her works have been commissioned and presented by The Kitchen (Fanfare, with set décor by Burt Barr), Dance Theater Workshop, La Mama for OtherShore Dance Company, Jacob’s Pillow, The American Dance Festival, Barnard College, Bennington College, Dance Box, Kansai, Japan, and opening the Dublin Dance Festival (2011) at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. She has worked with a vast array of dance artists such as Twyla Tharp and Mikhail Baryshnikov and continues to perform with choreographers Sara Rudner, Vicky Shick, Jon Kinzel, John Jasperse, Liz Roche, and Susan Rethorst. Currently, she also teaches at Barnard College at Columbia University, New York University (in the Experimental Theatre Wing), and Trevor Day School. SLC, 2013–

Undergraduate Courses 2023-2024

Dance

Movement Studio Practice

Component—Year

These classes will emphasize the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to each teacher's technical and aesthetic orientations. Instructors will change at either the end of each semester or midway through the semester, allowing students to experience present-day dance practice across diverse styles and cultural lineages. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and training rhythmically, precisely, and according to sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance.

Faculty

Graduate Courses 2023-2024

MFA Dance

Movement Materials Lab

Graduate Seminar—Fall

This course is a laboratory focused on the creative potential of human movement. We will explore how work can come into being through the material itself, transformed through the phenomenon of dancing.

While movements will be considered in terms of their compositional relationships to one another, the embodied experience of our dancing and its kinesthetic resonance will be prioritized over cognitively defined, conceptual concerns.  The course will respect the intelligence of intuition as we build aptitudes for play, manipulation, and expansion of movement palettes.  A key focus throughout the course will be the honing of an artistic voice in the creation of resonant dancing.

Faculty

Movement Studio Practice

Component—Year

These classes will emphasize the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to each teacher's technical and aesthetic orientations. Instructors will change at either the end of each semester or midway through the semester, allowing students to experience present-day dance practice across diverse styles and cultural lineages. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and training rhythmically, precisely, and according to sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance.

Faculty

Previous Courses

MFA Dance

Contemporary 3

Graduate Seminar—Year

Emphasis will be on the continued development of basic skills, energy use, strength, and control relevant to the particular style of each teacher. Attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and to disciplining the body to move rhythmically, precisely, and in accordance with sound anatomical principles. The students in this advanced class will study complex movement patterns, investigate somatic use, and concentrate on the demands of performance. 

Faculty

Contemporary Dance Practices

Component—Year

In these classes, emphasis will be on the continued development of basic skills, energy use, strength, and control relevant to the particular style of each teacher. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and to disciplining the body to move rhythmically, precisely, and in accordance with sound anatomical principles. Students will study complex movement patterns, investigate somatic use, and concentrate on the demands of performance.

Faculty

Modern and Postmodern Practice

Component—Year

In these classes, emphasis will be on the continued development of basic skills, energy use, strength, and control relevant to the particular style of each teacher. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and to disciplining the body to move rhythmically, precisely, and in accordance with sound anatomical principles. Intermediate and advanced students will study more complex movement patterns, investigate somatic use, and concentrate on the demands of performance.

Faculty

Movement Studio Practice

Component—Year

In these classes, emphasis will be on the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to the technical and aesthetic orientations of each teacher. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and to training rhythmically, precisely, and in accordance with sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance.

Faculty