photo by Stephen Obisanya
Melissa West is a choreographer and curator based in Staten Island, NY. Since 2008, her work has been presented in NYC at venues including Dixon Place, Triskelion Arts, The Living Theater, Atlantic Salt Factory for the LUMEN Festival, Queens Museum, and Bowery Poetry Club. She has held residencies through Staten Island Arts, Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, Greenbelt Conservancy, and the CUNY Dance Initiative.
West studied dance at the Staten Island Ballet, Hunter College, Movement Research, The Yard, and Gibney, among other spaces. She holds a dual-degree in Dance and English from Hunter College. In 2014, she earned a Masters in Performance Studies from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts.
Melissa West is the Director & Senior Curator of the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor. In this senior role, West oversees the Newhouse Center exhibitions, performances, residencies, public art, and related programs across the 83-acre historical campus. With a focus on multi and interdisciplinary projects in site-based contexts, West presents the work of emerging and established artists ranging in media across the visual and performing arts, and is an adjunct faculty member of Wagner College in the dance department. She is a 2023 Fellow for Utopian Practice with collaborator, Jahtiek Long, through Culture Push, and a recipient of the Mertz Gilmore Dance Research grant through Staten Island Arts.
Glass Fragments
photo by Christine Cruz
choreographic works
2022:
la selva subterrΓ‘nea
dance film study
2020:
remnants/ruins
site-specific dance film sequence, Staten Island, NYC
2019:
Winter Comet, 1961
Wagner College Stage One Blackbox Theatre, Staten Island, NY
(as part of the self-produced concert, Transmissions: A Decade of Dance Making)
Glass Fragments
A dance response to The Glass Essay by poet, Anne Carson
Unitarian Church of Staten Island, Staten Island, NY
2018:
Skeletal Phrases
Be Yoga & Dance, Staten Island, NY
emergent solo #1
Dixon Place, New York, NY
2017:
The Staten Island Dance Project
An ongoing oral history project that collects first-person narratives of Staten Island dancers and archives a broader history of dance in the borough. Recipient of the SI Arts Community Art Partners grant through NYSCA.
An Evening of Dances
Be Yoga & Dance, Staten Island, NY
A self-produced community dance concert that featured the reconstruction of dances by Melissa West, as well as new work by local dance artists. Supported by the SI Arts Community Art Partners grant through NYSCA for The Staten Island Dance Project.
2016:
bad woods
College of Staten Island (CUNY Dance Initiative), Staten Island, NY
Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, Staten Island, NY
My Body is a Landscape/The Landscape is a Body
Exhibition in collaboration with Erik Danielsen
Conference House Lenape Gallery, Staten Island, NY
Sea Wall/Fox Beach (dance film)
Conference House Lenape Gallery, Staten Island, NY
2014:
#wanderingaffect
Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Staten Island, NY
SHARP Artist Residency Program at Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden
bad woods
Greenbelt Nature Center, Staten Island, NY
I have trouble leaving places
choreographed with Mary Ellen Carafice
The Brick Theater, Brooklyn, NY
fallow time: Novel Ecologies (a collaborative practice)
part of a group ensemble brought together for the MR Spring Festival to explore performance-based ideas around place
Movement Research Spring Festival, Brooklyn, NY
Reveries of the Girl Wanderer (dance film)
Queens Museum/Open Engagement Festival, Queens, NY
2013:
A Vacant Island
Deep Tanks, Staten Island, NY
2012:
Telemann Dances
Open Space/DanceWorks, Staten Island, NY
sunset recess gyres
Atlantic Salt Factory/LUMEN Festival, Staten Island, NY
An Exercise in Formalities (dance film)
Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, Staten Island, NY
A Dance on Yeats but not to
Open Space/DanceWorks, Staten Island, NY
2011:
Three Ladies Dancing (dance film)
The Full Cup, Staten Island, NY
pretty little things
New Dorp Moravian Church Gymnasium, Staten Island, NY
2010:
They Taste Good to Her
Triskelion Arts, WaxWorks, Brooklyn, NY
2009:
Pictures
Hunter College Dance Company, New York, NY
2008:
The impressionists do a dance
Hunter College Dance Company, New York, NY
Theseus Rides Away
Hunter College Dance Company, New York, NY