NEW YORK, NY.- Steven Melendez is a stickler for dramatic detail. In a recent rehearsal of the pas de deux from Agnes De Mille’s “Carousel,” Melendez, the new artistic director of New York Theater Ballet, watched the dancers with close attention, frequently stopping them to ask about the intention behind each movement.

“When you put your hand out to raise her chin, what is that?” he asked Nathan Rommel, a recent recruit. Rommel reflected for a moment and came back with an answer. “OK, I want to see that,” Melendez said.

On a chair in the small studio at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery in the East Village lay a worn paperback copy of “An Actor Prepares,” Stanislavski’s 1936 exploration of the actor’s craft. Melendez requires all new dancers in the company to read it. “I have to train the dancers to learn this way of working,” he said.

In one sense, he is following in the footsteps of Diana Byer, the founder of New York Theater Ballet, who ran the company from its inception, in 1978, until August when Melendez took over. The company’s first New York performances under his direction, at Florence Gould Hall on Friday and Saturday, could have been programmed by Byer. They include works by Antony Tudor, Jerome Robbins, Martha Clarke and José Limón.

But in another sense, Melendez is subtly shifting the company’s emphasis. The changes he proposes are less about the work itself than about its social purpose. Since its founding, the company’s repertory has consisted mostly of 20th-century chamber ballets of the kind considered too small, and perhaps too old-fashioned, for big ballet troupes, like de Mille’s “Carousel” and Limón’s “Mazurkas.” (Byer also gave opportunities to a crop of new choreographers, some of whom, like Gemma Bond, Pam Tanowitz and Matthew Neenan, have gone on to major careers.)

Melendez, 36, plans to keep many of them, he said, though what motivates him is different: “Diana liked these works because of their value to the history of dance. But I like them because I think that if contextualized correctly, they will invite new-to-dance audiences to understand why dance is important.”

This phrase, “new to dance,” figures prominently in Melendez’s conversation. It is the audience he is aiming for.

In his view, “Dance is dying,” he said, in large part because it fails to make a case for itself with audiences who didn’t grow up going to the theater, much less to the ballet — people of diverse means and cultural backgrounds, who have for too long been ignored by the purveyors of high culture.

“Classical concert dance definitely has a race problem,” said Melendez, who identifies as Afro-Puerto Rican, “but it also has a class problem.”

Melendez is well placed to consider such questions. He spent three years, from 7 to 10, living at Seneca Houses, a homeless shelter for families in the South Bronx, with his mother and sister after being evicted from their home on Rosedale Avenue, also in the Bronx. Dance was not part of his world until he met Byer at an outreach event at the shelter, when he was 7. His mother, Myra Romero, was single, with two kids to support on a modest salary as a medical researcher. She decided to put him in dance classes as a form of child care.

“I could see he had a lot of courage,” Byer said of the young Melendez, “and he grabbed everything he needed in order to forge ahead.”




Melendez trained at New York Theater Ballet’s affiliated dance academy, the School of NYTB, on scholarship, as part of its LIFT Community Service Program, founded by Byer in 1989. Project LIFT, as it is known, provides dance classes, mentoring and homework assistance to about 30 students a year from low-income families, roughly one-fifth of the school’s student body. No one but Byer, who is still the director of the school, knows who is or isn’t on a scholarship.

Melendez’s life is chronicled in a recent documentary by David Petersen, “Lift,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this year. It follows the experiences of three young dancers in the program. They include Victor Abreu, who spent five years at the school before moving on to the School of American Ballet, and who now has a promising career at New York City Ballet.

“Diana was really involved in my life,” Abreu said in a phone interview. “She helped me get the tools that I needed in order to be able to do more. She really invested in your life in the time she had with you.”

Abreu, like Melendez, is one of the success stories. But the film does not gloss over the difficulties these students and their families face. Work schedules, housing issues and the daily grind of making ends meet often make showing up for dance classes in the East Village almost impossible. In Melendez’s case, the trauma of those years spent in a shelter are vividly brought home when he faints during a visit to Seneca Houses. “I don’t feel so good,” he says, looking wan and searching for the exit. “I don’t want to be here.”

Dance, he said, is what helped him transcend his situation. “One of the greatest things a child can have, in addition to a loving family, is a meaningful activity with a meaningful adult,” Melendez said. “For me, growing up, Diana was that person, and dance was the activity.”

Against the odds, Melendez became a professional dancer, joining New York Theater Ballet at 14, and going on to dance for companies in Argentina and Estonia. After retiring as a dancer, he directed LIFT for a year, before becoming the artistic director of the Albuquerque programming for NDI New Mexico, an organization that provides after-school arts education for children of all backgrounds.

His goal now, he said, is to apply the same principles of inclusivity and access that animate LIFT and NDI to New York Theater Ballet. He intends to do this through TED Talk-like events in community spaces, marketing that speaks to people beyond the traditional dance audience, and by speaking, at performances, about the meanings behind the works.

“The important thing is to contextualize,” he said. He pointed to the company’s coming performances, which include Tudor’s 1937 ballet “Dark Elegies,” about a community in mourning after a disaster that has brought about the death of its children.

“I want to tell the audience member who has never seen dance, ‘Are you having a hard time understanding what’s happening in Ukraine right now?’” Melendez said. “Here is a dance, made 100 years ago, that shows you what these people are going through.”

In the coming months, Melendez will also begin commissioning new works. His first, multiyear commission will be a series of dances about men and their relationships to their fathers. He calls it “Letters to My Father,” and it will include a work by Melendez. “I never knew my father,” he said. “So I want to reflect on, what does it mean not to have a father?”

None of this will be easy. The company is small, funding is tight and its East Village studio is cramped and hampered by columns that get in the dancers’ way. (Melendez is looking for a larger, column-free space.)

But Melendez is not cowed. The drama will be contained to the stage. “This transition isn’t tumultuous or dramatic,” he said. “It will be a series of small course adjustments that will come together, over time, to reveal a new way.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.