Melissa (she/her) is a director, movement director, choreographer and film programmer from Hawaiʻi, based in Berlin. Melding her background in dance, film and theatre, she approaches her work through a multicultural and interdisciplinary lens to create and organise theatre and film works centred around queer narratives.
Since graduating, Melissa has focused on creating FLINTA* dance theatre pieces and collaborated with Copenhagen Pride and Copenhagen Fringe Festival to direct her own stage work. Additionally, she has been highlighting non-Western queer narratives and emerging filmmakers as a freelance programmer with the London LGBTQ+ Community Centre, Pink Apple Film Festival in Zurich and as a grant committee evaluator for NewFest LGBTQ+ Film Festival in New York.
The MA Screendance allowed me to learn about the programming and organising side of events with putting up Frame Rush as a cohort. It sparked my interest in working with film festivals. Additionally, the MA Screendance critical theory modules gave me the space and guidance to get clarity on the perspective I want to create work from - it was an opening for me to begin to mix artistic media to authentically portray intersectional identities on stage and on-screen.