Photos by Shasti O'leary, Frederique Porter, Yi-Chun Wu

Melanie Aceto is a modern dancer and choreographer whose work has been performed in Toronto, New York City festivals including REVERB, Cool NY, D.U.M.B.O, American Dance Guild, Uptown Performance Series, Underexposed Festival and Hatch, in Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida, in Ohio as part of the Heidelberg New Music Festival, in Rochester, NY as part of the ImageMovementSound Festival and the Vision of Sound concert series, among others. She was a 2007 Research Fellow at Jacob’s Pillow International Dance Festival investigating choreographic components of master works.

Melanie’s interests are in exploring the integration of dance with other art forms including visual art, poetry, voice and live music. She has worked with contemporary composers Marc Mellits, Ping Jin, Evan Johnson and extensively with Mark Olivieri on projects including the ImageMovementSound festival, the Heidelberg New Music Festival and the Vision of Sound Concert of Live Music and Dance, a series of collaborative concerts with the Society for New Music, featuring original contemporary music and choreography.

Selected by the Center for the Moving Image at the University at Buffalo to participate in a film/dance project funded by the Liberace Foundation, Melanie’s newest group work is for nine dancers with music by Marc Mellits. Other current projects include a new choreographic work for solo flutist Lana Stafford to music by Ian Clark and a solo for vocalist Amanda Deboer to a score by by Luciano Berio.

Melanie earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in dance from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and has worked with New York based contemporary choreographers including Barry Blumenfeld, Ellis Wood, Monica Bill Barnes, Hilary Easton and Guta Hedewig. Melanie is a certified Pilates Instructor (www.pilatesmatworksbuffalo.com), dances with Jim Hansen’s Assemblage Dance and is an Assistant Professor at the University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY teaching modern technique, choreography, improvisation and contemporary partnering.