Melanie Lien Palm

Melanie Lien Palm was born in 1956 in Rapid City, South Dakota, USA, where at the age of eight she began dance lessons with Helen Griffiths and Kay Schneider at the Academy of Dance. Supported by grants she attended many different summer schools, including one at Ballet West in Aspen, Utah, where Barbie Hamlin was a huge influence on her love of pointe work, above all footwork without the aid of pointe shoes. Later she continued her education at various universities
including Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where she gained her Bachelor of Fine Arts in ballet. A range of jobs followed, including at Minnesota Dance Theatre, where she mainly danced works from the ballet repertoire, by George Balanchine, Glen Tetley or Loyce Houlton, for instance.

Returning to dance

In 1983 she took some time out to visit her sister in Germany. She didn’t really want to continue dancing, but she was given the tip to check out a performance by Pina Bausch, and took up the suggestion. Seeing Nelken (Carnations) left a deep impression on her. She immediately realised what dance had lacked for her till then. When she asked Jean Laurent Sasportes how Pina had found all these amazing dancers, he encouraged her to take part in an audition for the company the next day. She hung around inconspicuously in the background, eager to take in all these new ideas, and happy to be dancing again. At the end, Pina Bausch came over to her and said she hadn’t found anyone she wanted to keep, but she, Melanie, had made her furious because she clearly didn’t want the job. “Too right, I don’t want the job!” she replied. “Well you can have it if you want,” Pina Bausch responded calmly. She agreed, and remained a permanent member of the Tanztheater Wuppertal till 1988. She felt at home with the work, and happy with her colleagues. Alongside learning German, above all she learned the language of authenticity which the pieces demanded. This was the period when the company’s international success was increasing steadily, while the initial rejection turned to torrents of acclaim. Melanie danced in a total of thirteen pieces, and contributed to the creation of three new works: Auf dem Gebirge hat man ein Geschrei gehört (On the Mountain a Cry Was Heard), Viktor and Ahnen. In the end her need to help her family became too great and she returned – somewhat reluctantly – to the states.

A new start

She lived part of the time in a hut in South Dakota close to her family, and travelled the rest, leading countless workshops and choreographing several full-length pieces in New York, Milwaukee, Chicago and throughout the United States. She received funding from both the Bush Foundation and the McKnight Foundation.
In 1988 she met her husband in New York City. They married in 1990 and she returned with him to the Black Hills. She founded a pre- and primary school, combining Montessori and Waldorf pedagogics, which was a rapid success, with ninety pupils by its second year. She taught her own children too, till the age of fourteen. In 2009 she began a degree in holistic health and established Body Wisdom, a method which combines various approaches, including a range of yoga practices, Body Talk, MindScape, HelioSol, Emotional Resolution, ElectroDermal Stress Analysis and Holistic Health. She sees herself as a life-long learner, who, just like Pina Bausch, is on a quest to find out “what moves her”.

Text: Norbert Servos
Translation: Steph Morris