Melanie Hogan - DanceVersity Faculty Alumna
For over 15 years Melanie has been training, performing and teaching dance for a variety of audiences around the world. Melanie trained in modern dance at the Alvin Ailey School in New York, Mills College in Oakland and received a degree in dance and cultural anthropology from San Francisco State University in 2002. She has trained under Jamila and Suhaila Salimpour, Yousry Sharif, Sausan and many other established Middle Eastern dance instructors. In 2001, Melanie lived in the Netherlands, performed for the widely established Turkish community, and taught belly dance at the University of Amsterdam. For several years she additionally studied under the acclaimed classical Indian Kathak dance master, Pandit Chitresh Das. Due to chronic dance injuries early in her career, she started to practice mind/body disciplines such as Mindfulness Meditation, Qigong, and Ideokinesis. These disciplines have enlivened and deepened her understanding of the body, mind and energy and the power of thought and visualization as it relates to the moving body. She is the creator of the Mindful Belly Dance format that incorporates Mindfulness Meditation, Qigong and other somatic and mind/body disciplines for increased ease in movement and sustained energy. Melanie is currently working on her certification in Chinese Energetic Medicine from the Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine College in Berkeley, California. She is additionally trained in Ideokinesis by Evangel King in Berkeley, who studied directly under Andre Bernard, one of the key advancers of Ideokinesis in the 20th century.
