bios

Melanie Stewart, Artistic director and founder of MSDT and has been creating and producing original works for the concert stage, dance/film/video, and in education, both nationally and abroad since 1979. She holds a B.A. in dance from Webster College and an M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance from Temple University. Her early influences came from intensive study with mentor Ann Vachon and later Hellmut Gottschild and Philippe Gaulier which has supported her theatrical, highly visual and visceral approach to dance making. Critically acclaimed as a choreographer, her awards include fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, Dance Advance/Pew Charitable Trusts, and The PA Council on the Arts. She has been a choreographer in residence at The American Dance Festival and Jacob Pillow’s Winter Pillow in Philadelphia.

Melanie has also studied with Philipe Gaulier in London and New York. Her work with European and American artists has combined the European physical theatre techniques with American Modern Dance to produce such original dance theatre hybrids as Lilith (1993), Killing Charity (1995), Cocktail in the Sky (1995), Claire (1996), The Messenger (1996), Perfect: A Bouffon Musical (1997), Underlife Cabaret (1998), Kieko and Fan (1998), Love After Death (2000), Hard Candy (2001),The Gathering (2003), Babel (2004), The Girl with Bees in Her Hair, (2005), and A Simple Fact of Pain (2007)).

She was awarded a, 2002 Survivor With Style Award and the 2003 Best Fringe Dance Venue for NEW from the Philadelphia City Paper, a 2003 New Forms Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and in 2007 The Leigh Gerdine Fine Arts Distinguished Alumna Award from Webster University.

Her current projects include a solo adaptation of Deborah Hay’s choreography of I’ll Crane for You and the direction of Kill Me Now for the 2009 Live Arts Festival.

She is a Professor of Theatre and Dance at Rowan University.

MSDT Staff Members:

• Artistic Director: Melanie Stewart
• Assistant to the Director: Michael T. Roberts

MSDT Board of Directors:

• Tom Lowy
• Melanie Stewart
• Elisabeth Hostetter
• Debbie Lofton
• Karl Schappell 

Strategic Planning: Bill Moskin
Accountants: Visions in Innovative Accounting
Audit: Ruotolo and Spewak
Photography: Alan Kolc
Web Design: Crosshill Design