Speaker 1: Hey, hey, hey, hey, get us So Latino USA is
Speaker 1: celebrating thirty years today. In't that amos and we would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. Dear listener. Do you want
Speaker 1: to share with us exactly what Latino USA has meant
Speaker 1: to you? Do you have a birthday wish for us?
Speaker 1: Leave us a voicemail at six four six five seven
Speaker 1: to one one two two four. That's six four six
Speaker 1: five seven to one one two two four, and we
Speaker 1: might feature your message in an upcoming show. Grass yas.
Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Fernandes Santo's editorya director at Futudo Media, and
Speaker 2: I'm so happy to be here with you, dear listeners,
Speaker 2: celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Latino USA. Part of my
Speaker 2: job is to make sure that we continue to deliver
Speaker 2: these excellent shows that we bring to you every week
Speaker 2: for another thirty years or more. Happy anniversary, Latino USA.
Speaker 1: This is Latino USA, the radio journal of News and
Speaker 1: Court latin Us, La Latino Usa. I'm Maria INOJSA. We
Speaker 1: bring you stories that are underreported but that mattered to you,
Speaker 1: overlooked by the rest of the media, and while the
Speaker 1: country is struggling to deal with these we listen to
Speaker 1: the stories of Black and Latino Studient United Latino Front,
Speaker 1: a cultural renaissance organizing at the forefront of the movement.
Speaker 1: I'm Maria Ino Jossa.
Speaker 3: The truth is that I'm scared every day. Being the
Speaker 3: director of a ballet company is really hard. I had
Speaker 3: one director of another ballet company, a very important ballet company.
Speaker 3: He called me up after he'd heard the news that
Speaker 3: I was given this role, but all he said was
Speaker 3: my condolences. It's a lot of responsibility, but it's also
Speaker 3: for me at least, I feel the responsibility of being
Speaker 3: the artists in our community that are reflecting the community
Speaker 3: back at itself.
Speaker 1: From Futromedia and PRX, It's Latino USA. I'm Marie in
Speaker 1: Posa Today Stephen Melendez, dancer and artistic director of the
Speaker 1: New York Theater Ballet on opening the world of classical
Speaker 1: dance to new audiences. It's ten am at the New
Speaker 1: York Theater Ballet Dance Studio. The morning light filters through
Speaker 1: the stained glass windows that glow at one end of
Speaker 1: the room. On the other end is a huge mirror
Speaker 1: reflecting the twelve dancers in tights and leotards who are
Speaker 1: moving in unison to the pianos music.
Speaker 4: Let's try this from the same once more and really,
Speaker 4: really really endeavor. You have a tondo and this is
Speaker 4: with control.
Speaker 1: Stephen Melendez is teaching the class.
Speaker 4: But when you transfer your weight, you to your hips
Speaker 4: on your shoulders with you so that you can get
Speaker 4: up onto one leg.
Speaker 1: His attention to detail reveals that he's been dancing pretty
Speaker 1: much his whole life.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, thank you.
Speaker 1: Stephen, who identifies as Afro Puerto Rican, started dancing through
Speaker 1: the New York Theater Ballet's free dance program when he
Speaker 1: was just seven years old, and he loved it. By fourteen,
Speaker 1: he was already a professional dancer with the ballet company,
Speaker 1: juggling rigorous training and school.
Speaker 3: I mean there were days when it's a whole curtain
Speaker 3: because I had a mid term. I mean, imagine that
Speaker 3: a company full of professional dancers waiting, and the curtain
Speaker 3: can't go up because Steven is doing his midterm in
Speaker 3: the dressing room.
Speaker 1: Stephen went on to dance around the world and lived
Speaker 1: in places like Argentina and Estonia, but then he decided
Speaker 1: to retire from full time dancing and began taking leadership roles.
Speaker 1: Now at thirty six. Stephen is the new artistic director
Speaker 1: of the New York Theater Ballet. It's a big deal.
Speaker 1: He's the second person to get the job in the
Speaker 1: company's forty four years.
Speaker 4: And three and two and one, and train two and want.
Speaker 1: As artistic director, Stephen trains dancers, curates the company's programming
Speaker 1: and commissions new work. Today, Stephen is going to talk
Speaker 1: about his journey and dance and how he's moved through
Speaker 1: the traditionally elite space of classical ballet. Here is Stephen
Speaker 1: Melendez in his own words.
Speaker 3: When I was little, I would get on the A
Speaker 3: six train. I grew up in the South bron and
Speaker 3: going down the hole at Hunt's Point was sort of
Speaker 3: one kind of reality. And then coming out of the
Speaker 3: train on thirty third Street and Park Avenue where the
Speaker 3: ballet studio was, was a very, very very different kind
Speaker 3: of reality. That train ride sort of became like a
Speaker 3: magic tunnel. Over the course of that thirty minutes or
Speaker 3: forty minutes, I sort of rebuilt myself so that I
Speaker 3: could walk out on Park Avenue with all the people
Speaker 3: that belonged to on Park Avenue, and I would hold
Speaker 3: my chest different and I'd look at people differently, and
Speaker 3: I'd sort of imagine and pretend maybe I'd go into
Speaker 3: the ballet studio surrounded by mostly white people, and then
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, at the end of
Speaker 3: ballet class or whatever rehearsals, I'd get back in the train,
Speaker 3: get back in the hole magic tunnel, and go back
Speaker 3: up to the Bronx and come out. And suddenly it
Speaker 3: was very different. I wouldn't look at people in the eye,
Speaker 3: and it just sort of keep to myself and keep
Speaker 3: my head down. I I think movement is really really interesting.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: Of course I grew up dancing, and so I grew
Speaker 3: up studying the body and studying the way people move.
Speaker 3: But I think that dance is such a communicative language,
Speaker 3: probably the most communicative language we have as a society,
Speaker 3: and it surpasses geopolitical boundaries. I mean, you can see
Speaker 3: somebody move, doesn't matter what language they speak or where
Speaker 3: they're from, and you kind of know a little bit
Speaker 3: about them. You know, you can more or less guess
Speaker 3: their age, you can more or less guess their pride,
Speaker 3: And I think that's really magical. I've spent my life
Speaker 3: dedicating myself to understanding movement. It is really interesting to
Speaker 3: me to watch the way somebody from the South Bronx
Speaker 3: moves compared to the way somebody from Parking Avenue moves.
Speaker 3: And it has been really interesting in my life to
Speaker 3: try to change the way I mix in and out
Speaker 3: of different cultures. When I was seven years old, my
Speaker 3: family lived for about three years in a New York
Speaker 3: City homeless shelter, and we got there in a sort
Speaker 3: of roundabout way. My mother, a single mother, mad myself.
Speaker 3: My younger sister was to my memory at least a
Speaker 3: very successful person. She was a medical researcher at Mount
Speaker 3: Sinai Hospital. That doesn't change that she was a single mother,
Speaker 3: and that New York is expensive. And one day the
Speaker 3: landlord in the home where we lived, a private home
Speaker 3: in Rosedale section of the Bronx and I SA area
Speaker 3: in the Bronx, he passed away suddenly, I think he
Speaker 3: had a heart attack, and we were kicked out of
Speaker 3: the home sort of overnight, and we ended up in
Speaker 3: a homeless shelter. We stayed there for three years, and
Speaker 3: very very early on I was introduced to a woman
Speaker 3: named Diana Buyer, who was a director at that time
Speaker 3: of New York theater ballet, and she came into the shelter,
Speaker 3: She literally walked into the shelter and she said, I'm
Speaker 3: offering ballet classes to any kid who wants to come.
Speaker 3: Follow me. And my mother said, go follow that woman,
Speaker 3: and I did. And I had the most incredible, weak
Speaker 3: long workshop of ballet classes and lunch, reading books and
Speaker 3: all kinds of cool things related to dance and art
Speaker 3: in the ballet studio. And at the end of the week,
Speaker 3: I didn't think ballet was for me, but my mother
Speaker 3: she said I had to do it because she didn't
Speaker 3: have childcare and it was free. And so I was
Speaker 3: taking classes for a year, you know, once a week
Speaker 3: or twice a week. And at the end of the year,
Speaker 3: like every new young dancer, I was cast in The
Speaker 3: Nutcracker and I was casting the role of Little Mouse
Speaker 3: number two and I had a huge, huge mouse mask
Speaker 3: gone and a big fat suit for the mouse costume.
Speaker 3: And I was on stage for thirty seconds, maybe maybe
Speaker 3: a minute max a minute. But at the end of
Speaker 3: the performance I got to take a bow. And that
Speaker 3: was the most remarkable, incredible experience, going out on stage
Speaker 3: and taking a bow in front of four hundred twive
Speaker 3: hundred people, and I at the time was very confident
Speaker 3: that everybody was clapping for me. Of course, now I
Speaker 3: know that they weren't clapping for me, they were clapping
Speaker 3: for the professional dancers behind me. But it was so
Speaker 3: exciting the idea that I could do something and people
Speaker 3: would appreciate it. At that moment, I was hooked. That
Speaker 3: was the beginning of the end. I studied dance really
Speaker 3: seriously through the Lift program, which was the outreach program
Speaker 3: that Dana started with New York Theater Ballet. I was
Speaker 3: offered a spot in the Ballet Academy, and I joined
Speaker 3: the ballet company when I was fourteen. When I was
Speaker 3: a teenager, i'd wake up I don't know what time
Speaker 3: it was first period in public school, seven point fifty.
Speaker 3: I was coming from the Bronx, so i'd wake up
Speaker 3: with like five, get on the train at six thirty.
Speaker 3: I'd go to first period, which was usually something ridiculous
Speaker 3: like chemistry, calculus, or something really impossible to do at
Speaker 3: seven fifty in the morning, and then I'd leave school
Speaker 3: and I'd go to ballet class downtown for ten o'clock
Speaker 3: company class, and then on some days I would stay
Speaker 3: in the ballet studio and rehearse, and other days I'd
Speaker 3: go back to school or you know, a twelve thirty
Speaker 3: period where I'd do ridiculous things like literature or something
Speaker 3: really obscure and annoying that nobody wants to do there,
Speaker 3: at least that I didn't want to do. I much
Speaker 3: preferred staying in the ballet studio. And then I'd go
Speaker 3: back to ballet after school for rehearsal, and then i'd
Speaker 3: have another class in the evening, and I probably wouldn't
Speaker 3: leave the ballet studio until another seven thirty or eight
Speaker 3: o'clock at night, and then I had the trek home
Speaker 3: and the magic tunnel back to the Bronx, and I'd
Speaker 3: get home at nine o'clock so that I could start
Speaker 3: homework and do homework until ten thirty or eleven after eating,
Speaker 3: and do it all over again. And I did that
Speaker 3: for a really long time. Thirty years ago or a
Speaker 3: little bit more than thirty years ago, when Diana first
Speaker 3: started the LIFT program, she was really on the cutting
Speaker 3: edge of this kind of outreach work. But now thirty
Speaker 3: years later, my generation is graduating into positions of leadership,
Speaker 3: and it's now our responsibility to take up the flame
Speaker 3: and to do the work that the generation before me did.
Speaker 3: And the unique difference is that I have the opportunity
Speaker 3: to do the work from the perspective of someone who's
Speaker 3: lived it. The messenger matters equally as the message matters,
Speaker 3: and it means something different when I walk into a
Speaker 3: shelter saying I lived here, Come with me, then when
Speaker 3: Diana walked into the shelter and simply said, come with me.
Speaker 3: The thing that I'm realizing that maybe needs to change
Speaker 3: a little bit is the attention that we spend exclusively
Speaker 3: on children, but the adults that they go home to,
Speaker 3: they need to have their minds changed as well, so
Speaker 3: that they can participate in the new experiences that the
Speaker 3: kids are having. I love my uncle very much, but
Speaker 3: I remember when I was accepted to School of American Ballet,
Speaker 3: probably the greatest largest classical ballet school in the world,
Speaker 3: certainly in America, and his reaction to me was to
Speaker 3: sit me down on the stoop and to explain that
Speaker 3: he wanted to be sure that I didn't turn into
Speaker 3: one of them, and he was referring to the gay
Speaker 3: boys that were ballet dancers. And I remember that day
Speaker 3: so well that is the seared memory that I have
Speaker 3: of going home proud because I'd accomplished getting into school
Speaker 3: of American Ballet, and that was the reaction from my family.
Speaker 3: My mission now is to spend time targeting, in this case,
Speaker 3: new to dance audiences who are adult people, so that
Speaker 3: we affect generational change and make a generational impact from
Speaker 3: all angles whole. I don't know one hundred professional dancers,
Speaker 3: and ninety of them are going to tell you some
Speaker 3: version of I started a dance because my uncle, because
Speaker 3: my grandmother, because my mother, because my whoever showed me
Speaker 3: a dance on TV or brought me to the concert
Speaker 3: or was a dancer themselves. And the result of that
Speaker 3: anecdote is that dance maintains a sort of ancestral relationship
Speaker 3: with itself. It becomes a little ecosystem. If you're already
Speaker 3: in it generationally, then you're more likely to stay in
Speaker 3: it generationally. And if you're already out of it, it's
Speaker 3: very difficult to get in. And so if I can
Speaker 3: be successful at changing the makeup of the audience, the
Speaker 3: adult audience, then I think, secretly but not so secret,
Speaker 3: because I'm on the radio telling you right now, secretly
Speaker 3: I can change, ultimately the makeup of the people on
Speaker 3: the stage. I am really really driven on a for accessibility.
Speaker 3: Got a taxonomy of inaccessibility, and it includes economic and geographic,
Speaker 3: which are pretty straightforward. Things are too expensive and things
Speaker 3: are too far away. Then it includes things like cultural
Speaker 3: and intellectual. Sometimes something is inaccessible because it's not resonating
Speaker 3: with the community that it's supposed to be speaking at.
Speaker 3: And something like classical ballet with a long history of
Speaker 3: kings and queens and princesses and swans and whatever else,
Speaker 3: doesn't resonate with people who grow up in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: two in Harlem. That's just a reality. And there's no
Speaker 3: reason why we can't make new dances of and about
Speaker 3: the people today. And there's no reason why we can't
Speaker 3: contextualize the older master works that have been around for
Speaker 3: hundreds of years to explain to people why they're still
Speaker 3: relevant today. A lot of times, the dance industry, the
Speaker 3: performing arts, the fine arts, all the things that people
Speaker 3: consider elite up with that d quotes, the opera, the ballet,
Speaker 3: the symphony, all that stuff. They create systems where it's
Speaker 3: impossible for someone who doesn't know to figure it out.
Speaker 3: Simple things like the marketing and the branding of new ballets.
Speaker 3: When you advertise a new ballet by listing the choreographer's
Speaker 3: name and the name of the piece, well, if you
Speaker 3: don't know who the chographer is and you don't know
Speaker 3: the name of the piece, and that doesn't mean anything
Speaker 3: to you. The reviews the critics that talk only about
Speaker 3: the high level of technique that the dancers are employing
Speaker 3: to portray the characters. But if you don't know anything
Speaker 3: about dance, it doesn't matter to you if the dancer's
Speaker 3: leg is at ninety degrees or eighty nine degrees, or
Speaker 3: if they're turned out, or if they're turned in, or
Speaker 3: if they have the perfect quase line or the AFOs
Speaker 3: a line. These are just French words, so it don't
Speaker 3: mean anything. But the thing that everybody does understand, I
Speaker 3: think is the humanity and the storytelling. I'm really really
Speaker 3: interested in all of the ways that we can tell
Speaker 3: stories because I think that's what connects us. I think
Speaker 3: when I was younger, I was interested in that because
Speaker 3: it was a little bit of escapism for me. I'd
Speaker 3: go on stage with a new character and I could
Speaker 3: be that guy for a minute. I could be Prince
Speaker 3: Charming for three acts one night performing Othello. You'd go
Speaker 3: out there as Othello, and you could be really, really angry,
Speaker 3: you know, in a way that I would never be
Speaker 3: in real life. But on stage it was okay. In
Speaker 3: the classical ballet canon. You go out there and you
Speaker 3: can be a bird. You could be bluebird because I
Speaker 3: know who all those characters are. But knowing who I am,
Speaker 3: that's kind of scary. I think I'm knowing toward figuring
Speaker 3: that out. I never knew my father, except that he
Speaker 3: made it so that I didn't speak Spanish as a kid.
Speaker 3: And I heard a piece of music during the pandemic time,
Speaker 3: and it made me sort of nostalgic for this memories
Speaker 3: of having a father, but I never had a father.
Speaker 3: There were like daydreams that I was imagining, like you know,
Speaker 3: being on the bicycle and my father pushing it along
Speaker 3: or playing catch in the front yard or whatever, but
Speaker 3: I never actually had those experiences. And the music sort
Speaker 3: of compelled me to make this dance, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 3: I should make a dance about fatherhood. That'd be so cool.
Speaker 3: And then it occurred to me that if I did that,
Speaker 3: it would be a very myopic view of that relationship
Speaker 3: between a son and the father, because not everyone has
Speaker 3: my experience with a father, and who am I to
Speaker 3: make a dance that says, this is what sons and
Speaker 3: fathers are like? And so I decided instead that I
Speaker 3: would commission a series of ballets, all choreographed by different
Speaker 3: male artists, each one from a slightly different perspective, and
Speaker 3: each one a letter from that male artist to their father,
Speaker 3: and between the five or six or seven or eight pieces,
Speaker 3: over the course of many years, my hope is to
Speaker 3: prompt a dialogue in the public and the audience about
Speaker 3: the relationships plural that sons and fathers can have or
Speaker 3: should have or shouldn't have or have had. And I
Speaker 3: think it's uniquely relevant to tell these stories now because
Speaker 3: we're at an inflection point generationally, and I think if
Speaker 3: we don't have a ballet like what I'm proposing now,
Speaker 3: we'll end up talking to ghosts. And I think that
Speaker 3: dance is so nuanced that maybe actually we as artists
Speaker 3: can from the stage shed light on these other experiences
Speaker 3: that the world needs to hear about, and I need
Speaker 3: to hear about it now. The truth is that I'm
Speaker 3: scared every day. Being the director of a ballet company
Speaker 3: is really hard. I had one director of another ballet company,
Speaker 3: a very important ballet company, and he called me up
Speaker 3: after he'd heard the news that I was given this role.
Speaker 3: But all he said was my condolences. It's a lot
Speaker 3: of responsibility, but it's also for me at least, I
Speaker 3: feel the responsibility of being the artist in our community
Speaker 3: that are reflecting the community back at itself.
Speaker 1: That was Stephen Melendez, Artistic director of the New York
Speaker 1: Theater Ballet. This episode was produced by Julia Rocha and
Speaker 1: edited by Daisy Contreres. It was mixed by j J.
Speaker 3: Carubin.
Speaker 1: The Latino USA team includes Andrea Lopez Crusado, Marta Martinez,
Speaker 1: Mike Sargent, Victoria Estrada Rinaldo, Leanos Junior, Patricia Sulbrand, and
Speaker 1: Elizabeth London Torres. Our editorial director is Fernandes Santos. Our
Speaker 1: director of engineering is Steffaney Lebau. Our senior and is
Speaker 1: Julia Caruso. Our associate engineer is Gabriella Byez. Our marketing
Speaker 1: manager is Luis Luna. Our theme music was composed by
Speaker 1: Signet Rubinos. I'm your host and executive producer marieo Hosa
Speaker 1: join us on our next episode. In the meantime, look
Speaker 1: for us on your social media at Latino USA and
Speaker 1: remember lotoyas Bye.
Speaker 5: Latino USA is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation,
Speaker 5: working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide,
Speaker 5: the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the
Speaker 5: Heising Simons Foundation, unlocking knowledge, opportunity, and possibilities. More at
Speaker 5: hsfoundation dot org.
Speaker 4: It's impossible, It's fun. Thank you.