Melina is a modern-day bohemian
Renaissance woman: second-generation belly dance artist, performer,
choreographer, teacher, writer, circus producer & aerialist with a PhD in
medieval French Literature.
Boston-based Melina has toured with the Flying Wallendas and
performs on the earth & aerially at venues worldwide. Melina is co-founder
of Daughters of Rhea, Cirque Passion and the ALS Therapy Development Institute.
Her life has been featured on 60 Minutes II, National Public Radio, The New Yorker, and the documentary So Much, So Fast.
Melina and Sacha of Cirque Passion at Belly Dance Magic 2006
"The first photo that I have of myself belly dancing is in utero. I am
in my mother’s rounded belly, and that belly is dancing. It is a black
and white picture from 1969 taken [by Robert Altman] at the Berkeley Fiddler’s Convention
in California. My mom is six months pregnant with me, belly dancing
with a smile and arms outstretched in a coin costume, surrounded by a
beaming outdoor audience full of hippies. My older sister Piper, then
6, sits on our mom’s shoulders, her little hands reaching out to match
mom’s. Mom is musically accompanied by my dad’s folk bank, the
Pittsburgh Pirates, playing 'Little Egypt'.”
Melina dances on the rooftop garden stage at the Athina tis Niktas taverna in 1977
"Mom never prefaced anything by saying: 'This is a hard thing to learn.
If you practice every day, maybe you’ll master it enough to do it on
stage.' Instead she said 'Hey Melinda, come in here and see if you can
balance this tray of candles on your head'."
Click photo to read more of Melina's essay...
Ever the innovative artist, Melina was born to a folk-musician father and a hippie-artist
belly dance mother during the late 60s Berkeley, California cultural
revolution. She exited Rhea's shimmying womb into a vibrant life of dance
and circus arts, and has never looked back!
Click HERE to see Melina performing this amazing number in Athens, Greece!
Melina at Belly Dance Magic 2007
Currently residing in Boston, Melina is regularly invited to teach and perform in Athens, Greece!
"Books were no
longer magical flying carpets upon which you could blithely coast,
sensuously soaking up the flavors of new narrative realms; they had
become the cadaverous tools of my trade.
Now,
books were meant to be dissected alive, over-analyzed in the presence
of ambitious, over-posturing peers, then embalmed with jargon-infused
theory and finally laid to rest in rigorously-argued papers bound for
obscure French literary journals."
