Doing First

A few weeks prior to the premiere of Superbloom at the 92nd St Y, I snuck into Jodi Melnick’s Modern class at Barnard College where I first met her as my teacher in 2016. This time, she and I sat in Studio 305 to talk about her dancing life, movement as transmission, and her upcoming premiere, Superbloom (Dancing Into Choreographic Forms), a world premiere dance performance with Sara Mearns. Later I spoke with Sara Mearns on a Zoom call to hear her perspective. Superbloom premiered March 27–28, 2026 at The 92nd Street Y, where Melnick and Mearns danced along Tamisha A. Guy, Catherine Kirk, and Amanda Kmett’Pendry.

Joëlle Santiago: What is one of your early memories of movement?

Jodi Melnick: An early, early memory was late at night, in bed, telling my mother that I felt the blood in my lower leg moving. She used to put my leg up on a little yellow children’s stool. She would rub my legs,  thinking I was having growing pains. I would tell her: no, I actually feel my blood moving, and I feel my skin stretching. In my teens, I could sense when the hair on my legs was growing, when my pupils dilated. I was always very sensitive to my body. My mom said that I, unlike any of her other children, felt everything deeply. I felt my bones hurt, the presence of my spine, or the way my skull felt. I was always very aware. After an accident a few years ago, I had some screws and plates implanted in my foot. When it’s very cold out, I can feel the temperature in my lower leg change, because of the titanium plate. Whether that’s true scientifically, I don’t know. But I can feel it.

JS: Are those early connections present in your dancing today?

JM: I connect to the fact that I’m more than just a skeleton with muscles. In my dancing I think about direction, the breath, the skeletal system — not in a scientific way, but in metaphor — how the organs are positioned in the body, their weight, their properties. And not just metaphorically: your heart might represent love or passion, but also, there’s a sack around the heart, and that carries weight. Heart, pericardium, layers of fascia, tissue– it makes me feel more three dimensional. I imagine what’s going on between my rib cage and my guts and my blood and my spine. It makes me feel, at times, really thick and heavy. I love feeling weight and heaviness in a body that has a lot of lightness to it.

And then I started thinking about the properties of molecules, enzymes, and bones. What does enamel feel like? What does bone feel like? What does extending from a bone mean? It just gave me more qualities to work with: tension and release, weight, lightness, heaviness, line. Early on, I didn’t have the desire nor the muscular structure to hold my leg up, or do a grand rond de jambe. I had to figure out how to do it in a different way. How do I deploy momentum? It wasn’t through muscularity, because it didn’t feel good, and I didn’t have that. I was thinking of direction, organ support, and bone support.

Also, I’m very aware of my nervous system, especially living in New York City. My nervous system is constantly on fire: there’s dirt, there’s piss, there’re dead rats, there’s food, there’s art, there’re gorgeous people. I feel the detail of everything deeply. I’m probably making all of this up.

Then, I think about how all of this information translates from my body into the space I’m in, on the street, or in the studio. If you bring another body in, how does my body relate to that body? How do our bodies relate to the space we’re in? How does the space we’re in relate to the world, the life-world-space we’re in?

JS: We just finished dancing and enjoying the lush sensations of movement. A note you’ve always given in class is: don’t comment on the movement, don’t comment, don’t comment, don’t comment. It took me a long time to understand what that meant. How do you reconcile all of this intense feeling with that minimalism?

JM: I have both a minimalist and a maximalist idea of movement. For example, if we talk about a plié at the barre— yes, there’s a form — but there’s also commentary from the neck, the épaulement, the wrist turning over. I am more interested in the action itself, and the feeling I get from it. I really want an approach that is technical, anatomical, muscular, and organic. I don’t want to see the feeling of a plié. I want you to do: open the knee joints, support with your rotators, locate the big toe mound, feel the toes going forward, the heels going back, the space in the knee joint. I don’t want an idea of it. I want honesty and presence with what’s happening. I feel there’s nothing more gorgeous than lifting your arm, and the space between your ear and your neck and your armpit and your arm. When you comment, I’ve lost it. You’re already telling me what you want me to feel.

I often say when I’m teaching class– I know this may seem antithetical for someone who loves dancing, who loves feeling– but I don’t want you to feel first. I want you to do first. You’re going to have a feeling, but I don’t want you to go for the feeling— go for the action first. I’m not asking you to be clever.  Technique is about being.

JS: It’s deceptively simple.

JM: It’s also about sustainability. I am interested in a very thoroughly warmed, safe body. If you want to continue dancing in your 40s, 50s, 60s, it’s not magic. It is work. You cannot phone it in with the body, because the body is going to say: sorry, I’m not going to sustain this.

JS: You once told me, “You don’t become a dancer until your 40’s– because of all of the life that you’ve lived inside of your body, and all of the feeling.” My interpretation of this had less to do with the exact number, and more about the passing of time and accumulation of memory.

JM: Did I ever tell you how to make a ton of money?

JS: I’m sure you did as well.

JM: I did my super-dancing– the Twyla Tharp work– in my late 20’s, and I would never give up those years of dancing. But it wasn’t until my 40s that dancing became more holistic: mind, brain, intellect. I still have the same relationship with it. I just loved being a dancer in my 40s. I loved being in the studio with choreographers and giving them the reins, and feeling empowered in what I could bring to their work. I’m hoping for another decade like that, but I don’t think it’s gonna happen.

JS: I think you’re going to live forever.

JM: We’ll see.

JS: What are you working on right now in your own dancing?

JM: Simplicity and efficiency, because I do have to take care of my body, which isn’t what it was anymore.

JS: How old are you?

JM: Sixty-fucking-two. Today I don’t feel it so much, but in the last month, I’ve been like, how am I going to do this?

At this point I took a break to get water. When I came back, Jodi was bounding around the studio, rehearsing a few eight-counts of Sara Rudner material from Dancing Parttime. “I still have a few weeks to get this,” she said.

JS: Speaking of which, let’s talk about Superbloom.

JM: The 92nd Street Y really wanted something historic, and Sara [Mearns] is so interested in dancing my own history. We decided that the piece would be about female choreographers. And we’re joined by Cat Kirk, and Tamisha A. Guy, and Amanda Kmett’Pendry, who are just phenomenal. I’m so out-of-this-world lucky to work with them.

In my research, I re-discovered the work of Anna Sokolow, who I remembered studying in college. I came upon two pieces: one is a solo from Lyric Suite, and one is an excerpt from Steps of Silence. It really moved me dramatically. Sara and I have been learning the technique from Samantha Gerecht Myers and Lauren Naslund from the Sokolow Foundation.

In Superbloom, I’m not doing anybody’s work verbatim, except for some of Rudner’s material that I was looking at, a piece called Dancing Parttime. There’s some really beautiful rhythmic material in duet and solo forms. I want to continue to pass through Rudner’s body.

But even beyond the work inspiring Superbloom, there are so many women whose bodies I’ve passed through, and who have generously guided and taken care of me.

Let’s start with the Saras. There was Sarah Stackhouse– I never met a body like that. She really loved the dancers she was working with, and took care of us. She would talk to us about the rich culture of dance and history, and would make sure we had context. It was holistic.

Then, Sara Rudner. The first time you see Sara Rudner dance, you’re either inspired, or you think: I should quit. There’s no one dancer on Earth like Sara Rudner.

Sara Mearns has been a complete surprise gift. As much as I’ve been there for her, she has been there for me, through joy, through aging, through injuries, through doubting.

There’s of course Twyla Tharp, so ruthless and talented. I always wish it had gone on for longer.

Before that and after that and always, there was Trisha Brown. I didn’t get into the company, but I formed this other kind of relationship with her. I made material for her company and for operas, and then we just became very close friends.

Vicky Schick is still on most days, the first person I talk to almost every day at 8:30 in the morning. She’s a generous catalogue of endless information and courage.

Working with Susan Rethorst was an embarrassment of riches. Yoshiko Chuma: the biggest wild card in the world– a physical ball of fire. Liz Roach, Sibyl Kempson, Beth Gill, my students and faculty at Barnard College and Sarah Lawrence College. I know I’m leaving so many people out.

Superbloom comes from living in this unusual world created by lineages– a continuum of movement passed down from body to body. Just being in the studio together is a beautiful, radical practice.

JS: I’m trying to think of a closing question.

JM: What’s next? I don’t know. I’m not interested in next. This is all there is.

 

Later that week, I met Sara Mearns over Zoom to hear her perspective. 

Joëlle Santiago: What does dancing feel like these days?

Sara Mearns: It’s very complicated and it’s different every day. I’m turning 40 soon, and I’ve had a host of chronic injuries over the last four or five years that have been really challenging. Everyday I wake up and ask, how am I going to do this? I’m not commenting on how people may experience my dancing. I’m speaking about the feeling of it, and what I know my best is. Everyday feels like a fight to get to that point again.

Jodi keeps telling me that she did her best dancing in her 40’s, but I think it’s different in the ballet world. That’s been extremely challenging, and at same time, I’ve had huge joys, and amazing collaborations. At this point, it feels really important to make the most of every second. These days, I don’t feel the same anxiety that I used to because I’ve lived a whole life on stage. There are less surprises, and I feel so much more inside of my body when I’m performing. It’s richer now.

JS: One of the things that you’ve spoken about in the past is your strong emotional connection to your dancing. Jodi always says, “Don’t comment when you’re dancing. When you move, you’re going to have a feeling. Don’t show me the feeling, do the action.” How has this approach changed the way that you work, or challenged what you know about movement?

SM: This was one of the first notes that Jodi gave me when we started working together in a residency at Jacob’s PIllow. “Dont comment on the movement,” to me means being more invested in one’s own experience than what the audience is feeling. At New York City Ballet, we’re dancing on such a big stage, and the audience is so far away, that I used to feel like my dancing needed to reach out to them to help them have an experience.

What I’m learning is that as a performer, it’s actually not my job to reach out to the audience. My job is to let them come to me. My job is to be so present with the movement, and the storytelling, and the sensation, that they get sucked in. It’s not easy, but I’m learning. I’ve learned that from Jodi. Also, that idea of refraining from commenting extends into my everyday life as well. It’s easy to be drawn in a million directions. My job is to be present.

JS: Some themes that came up in my conversation with Jodi were: dance as lineage, as transmission, community, and as a way of being with the wholeness of self.  In Jodi’s portion of the interview, she mentions that you’ve been a “surprise gift” to her, and a huge source of support through doubt, injuries, and aging. What has Jodi and her process given you?

SM: Listening is at the core of our relationship. We listen to each other, and we always have. My role at New York City Ballet can be extremely lonely– discipline comes with isolation. In the studio with Jodi I’m not a chess piece. I get to contribute my thoughts, perspectives, and questions while she develops the work. I feel like a whole person. I don’t know if I would have danced as long at NYCB as I have without her. Jodi is my support system and my community. I always wonder what I would have been like if I was Jodi’s student. I mean, I guess I am.

Photo by Se Yoon Park.