Melaina Muth is a performing artist from Brookfield, Illinois. She is a senior in the Contemporary Dance B.F.A. program at Indiana University Bloomington, and she has experience in dance, music, theatre, and film.
Full bio below!
Melaina was part of the non-profit Ballroom Dance Club at Indiana University from 2021 to 2025. Shwas the team’s Captain from 2022 to 2024 and a Team Teacher from 2022 to 2025. As part of this organization, she has taught lessons on multiple styles of dance, choreographed showcases, and competed at competitions.
She was also part of Di:verse Dance Crew from 2021 to 2025 and was the Co-President from 2023 to 2025 and a Lead Choreographer from 2022 to 2025. As part of this crew, she has directed shows, edited a multitude of music sets, taught choreography, and performed both her her own choreography as well as covers of other hip hop choreographies.
Melaina has partook in the Camille A. Brown “City of Rain” residency and Meira Goldberg’s “Pulso” (flamenco) residency. She choreographed in the most recent 2023 production and performed in the 2021 production of the Junior Choreographic Performance Project. She also performed in the 2022, 2023 and 2024 Senior Capstone show: “New Moves/New Directions”. For the 2025 Capstone Show “Echoes”, she has created her own work and performed in a piece by Caroline Dahm.
She also performed guitar as part of Robert Burden’s “Zapateado Palmas” (2023) tap piece, and edited music for Robert Burden’s house class and his piece “House of Love” that premiered at the 2022 New Moves production. She also edited music for Rachel Stratton’s “In Place of Convalescence” (2023)
Melaina has been dancing for nineteen years and has studied a multitude of styles including: contemporary, ballet, hip hop, ballroom, jazz, Afro-Cuban, and tap
Before attending Indiana University, Melaina trained at Joffrey Academy in Chicago and Principle Dance. She also attended the Alvin Ailey Summer Intensive in 2019.
Melaina has competed at various locally hosted collegiate ballroom competitions as well as Ohio Star Ball and USA Dance Nationals and received coaching from the Fort Wayne Ballroom Company. She competed as both a Lead and a Follow at various levels with different partners.
She has worked with Chris Spalding, Kelly Barlett, Ryan Galloway, Lalah Ayan, Clarence Angelo, Beatrice Capote, Robert F. Burden Jr., Baba Stafford C. Berry Jr, and Elizabeth Shea in both class and choreographical settings.
Many of her recent works involved digital media and dance film of both original choreography and dance covers. Post-college she plans on pursuing a career in choreography, dance film, hip hop, and ballroom dance.
When it comes to creating…
“As a choreographer, my focus is on highlighting the musicality of the music and how it can be used to tell the story of the piece in its entirety. I am inspired by music, but also by the way in which many dance techniques can be combined to create new meanings and new contexts. I am of the mindset that movement should be a conversation between the music and a dancer’s intention and connection to the those around them. One of my goals as a choreographer is to illustrate how different people deal with life, relationships, and emotions. Being able to push myself and others past the point of comfortability while maintaining the natural authenticity of the movement is a central pillar of my work.
For a piece I choreographed in 2023 called “Ambivalence,” I focused on the different emotional relationships people can have with one another and conveyed it through multiple different dance forms and musical scores. The piece guided the audience through a night where a friend group fell apart and transitioned from positive to negative emotions regarding each other. It included elements of contemporary, ballroom (specifically waltz and rumba) and hip hop. One of the exercises I used to create the piece had the dancers ‘fill-in-the-blank’ to create a phrase together that would then be used as the main phrase of the dance. I also had the dancers create their own phrases and modify the tempo and pattern of the phrases to create duets. In addition to this, I incorporated many pedestrian movements and chances for the dancers to act and react to various stimuli and emotional concepts that allowed them to communicate the plot through body language and not dance movements.
To a great degree, I believe that movement has the capability to express what words cannot and allows us as individuals to communicate one’s thoughts, feelings and wishes. The relationship between music and dance is paramount in regards to this style of expression as it can enhance the different types of atmosphere and tone created and further engage the audience in the thematic and emotionally engaging moments within a piece.”