Melanie Holm MANX Artistic Director
Melanie Holm, MANX Artistic Director, is a soprano, dancer, and choreographer reframing opera through a movement-driven lens. She recently completed artist residencies at Bearnstow (Mount Vernon, Maine) and Moulin Belle (Mareuil en Perigord, France), and presented Three Women/One Body, her dance/opera fusion work featuring arias by Handel, Mozart, and Bellini, at The Tank. Recently, she has been featured in interdisciplinary opera/dance projects with the Brooklyn Motion Capture Dance Ensemble, and showcased her choreographed take on Jake Heggie's Eve Song with Take Root at Green Space, produced by Green Space Studios. With her signature choreographed operatic works, Melanie has made a name for herself throughout New York City, where her work has been featured at National Sawdust, Triskelion Arts, GreenSpace, Bridge for Dance, SMUSH Gallery, and in guest appearances with Borne Dance Company and Reaction Dance Company. She is also a member of Your Faithful Reader, an experimental theatre company, where she has been featured as an actor, dancer, and writer.
Melanie collaborated with multimedia artist ONOH as SEED Residency Artists with [nueBOX], arranging the finale to Mozart’s Don Giovanni for soprano, dance, visuals, and electronics, and reframing the story through a female perspective. Additional 2021-2022 projects include choreographing and performing Jake Heggie’s Eve Song with pianist Karey Miles, premiering composer Ashlee Busch’s Joy Girl with Micaela Rebb and the Arizona Women’s Collaborative, and joining the 2022 Teaching Artist Training Cohort with Mark Morris Dance Group.
Melanie is committed to continuing her education past the traditional academic spheres, particularly in integrating music and dance. She is completing prerequisite courses for the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies through a Work/Study Internship with Alexandra Beller/Dances, and is a recent alum of the Maestra Music Mentorship Program, an initiative pairing emerging artists pursuing careers in music making with established female or non-binary artists. She is also a graduate of the DBR Lab, an interdisciplinary artist cohort curated by Daniel Bernard Roumain, Jeff McMahon, and Arizona State University.
Melanie’s accolades include being an Arizona State Lyric Opera Theatre Guild Grant Recipient, an Encouragement Award Winner at the Metropolitan Opera District Auditions, and a Semi-Finalist in the Phoenix Opera Southwest Vocal Competition. She holds degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (BM/Voice with a Dance Minor) and Arizona State University (DMA/Voice & MM/Opera Performance), where her graduate research focused on using Gaga Movement Language and Bartenieff Fundamentals to help singers develop deeper kinesthetic connections to their vocal technique. She currently lives in the Bronx, and studies with Riley McKinch. For more info on Melanie’s work, visit https://www.melanieholmsoprano.com.