Biography
Melissa is a professional dancer and choreographer who has been working in the LA commercial dance industry for many years. She performed on the AMAs (Swizz Beatz, Chris Brown, Ludacris), Latin Grammys, Armenian Music Awards, Miss USA Pageant, and the MTV Movie Awards. Artists she has danced for include Post Malone, Little Boots, Lil Mama, Kirk Franklin, TATU, and Gloria Gaynor. She has also danced on the hit TV shows Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, Perry Mason, 90210 and Carpool Karaoke. Other dance credits include Adidas, PlayStation, Paul Mitchell, Ducati, Dish Network and Med Assets. Melissa has choreographed industrials, commercials, music videos and many live stage shows, including choreographing for the Clippers dance team. Melissa is a former performer, choreographer, and rehearsal director of “All Wheel’s Extreme,” a high-energy extreme sports show you may have seen on America’s Got Talent. Melissa was lead choreographer at Knott’s Berry Farm for many years where she choreographed The Haunt stage shows “Psycho Circus of Magic and Mayhem” Parts 1 and 2, “Ed Alonzo’s Funhouse,” “The Hanging” and “Bloomination.” She has also choreographed for Cedar Point, Great America, and Gilroy Gardens.
Along with dance and choreography, Melissa has become a sought after jazz and lyrical instructor. In Los Angeles, she has taught at TMilly, Edge Performing Arts Center, Millennium Dance Complex, The C Spot and Debbie Reynolds. Melissa is currently on faculty with Dupree Dance Convention and AMDA Los Angeles. She also works frequently as a guest teacher and choreographer. She had the privilege early on in her career of touring Europe and the Middle East performing for the U.S. troops, which was when she fell in love with international travel. Since then, her career has taken her to France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan (Broadway Dance Center Tokyo), Korea, Mexico and Canada. Melissa was chosen as the first technical dance instructor and judge for World of Dance Panama (WOD) two years in a row, and most recently returned from her first trip teaching at Jazz Dance World Congress in Brazil.