Connect with us

Create

Tampa dancer performs with New York company at Straz this week

Bill DeYoung

Published

on

Tatiana Melendez grew up in the Carrollwood section of Tampa. Photo provided.

Tampa’s Tatiana Melendez is in her third season as a principal dancer with Complexions Contemporary Ballet, an acclaimed, boundary-stretching New York company.

“Selfish choreographer that I am, I want Tatiana to stay with Complexions for all time,” Dwight Rhoden, Complexions’ co-artistic director and resident choreographer, told Pointe magazine. “She has a theatricality about her: When the music comes on, she gets swept away.”

Pointe, Fall 2020. “I thought that having a little corner inside, on the bottom left side, would be enough to celebrate,” Melendez says. “So it was really crazy that they wanted to have me on the cover, and to do a whole article about me.”

Pointe put Melendez on the cover of its Fall 2020 issue, and the writer underscored what Rhoden said: “At the core of her dancing is a beautiful versatility. She’s just as much at ease when etching pure classical lines as she is when boldly throwing herself off-balance.”

At 22, standing five-foot-one, Melendez – who grew up in the Carrollwood section of Tampa – is a rising star in the fiercely competitive world of contemporary dance. She’ll be on the stage of the Straz Center’s Ferguson Hall Thursday when Complexions, which has toured the United States (and the world, 20 countries and counting) makes its bay area debut.

“In the beginning, I didn’t know that you could make dance a career,” she tells the Catalyst. “I just did it because my mom put me in, as an extracurricular activity. Then I fell in love with it.”

She’d started taking lessons at the age of 4; by 8, she’d signed on to train at Tampa’s All American Dance Factory. “I was lucky I grew up in a competition studio,” says Melendez, “so I did all styles of dance from tap to ballet, jazz, hip hop, lyrical, acro. I primarily focused on ballet and contemporary when I was around 12.”

At a competition, she caught the attention of Houston Ballet’s ballet master Claudio Muñoz, and she was invited to joint the company’s Professional Program, where she trained for two years. She left Tampa for Houston at 15.

“Tatiana is the most incredible hard worker I ever saw,” said Muñoz in Pointe. “She became a beautiful swan, with a classical heart and contemporary soul.” Next came a year with Texas Ballet Theatre in Fort Worth.

Auditioning for Complexions, Melendez insists, was something she was not – initially – sure she was ready for.

However, “Once the opportunity came up for me to audition for them, I was really excited because it was something completely different to what I was doing.

“But I feel like that kind of work is what I was made to be doing – because I did grow up doing so many different styles and I had that technical foundation, but I also had so much more to offer than just ballet and ballet technique. I felt like I was meant to do so much more.”

Contemporary ballet, she explains, blends elements from classical ballet with newer, looser forms of physical expression. “Ballet really is the foundation to most styles of dance, and contemporary dance is more free, depending on the choreographer. It’s very movement-based.

“You have the foundation of ballet, and the technique is there, but it goes beyond the boundaries of ballet. You’re thrown off your leg, and we roll off the floor, we kind of incorporate all kinds of different styles of dance all together into one. Keeping that classical foundation.”

Thursday’s program includes two pieces by artistic director Rhoden. Woke is a topical work, addressing issues of social injustice, while Love Rocks is a purely celebratory piece set to the music of Lenny Kravitz.

Said criticaldance.org in a review of a company performance at New York’s Joyce Theatre: “Tatiana Melendez is a tiny bundle of energy who also can’t be ignored because she’s such fun to watch.”

Melendez has been back to visit family and friends, but this will mark her first time performing in her hometown as a professional dancer.

“I have so many people coming to the show, it’s crazy,” she says. “But it’s exciting!”

All additional info, and tickets, can be found here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

By posting a comment, I have read, understand and agree to the Posting Guidelines.

The St. Pete Catalyst

The Catalyst honors its name by aggregating & curating the sparks that propel the St Pete engine.  It is a modern news platform, powered by community sourced content and augmented with directed coverage.  Bring your news, your perspective and your spark to the St Pete Catalyst and take your seat at the table.

Email us: spark@stpetecatalyst.com

Subscribe for Free

Share with friend

Enter the details of the person you want to share this article with.