Born in Rio de Janeiro, Fernando Melo can’t remember when he first became interested in dance. “It was always there. When as a child I saw something with dance or movement on TV, I joined in.” So when a dance studio opened its doors close to his home, he signed up as soon as he could. He didn’t have any strict preferences. “I did ballet, modern dance, jazz, flamenco, musical, you name it.” But gradually his interest was drawn ever more to classical ballet. He started taking part in ballet competitions and at the age of sixteen, at one of these competitions, he won a scholarship to study at the ballet school of the Vienna State Opera. “Since then I’ve only ever been back to Brazil for holidays and to visit my family,” says Melo, who now has been living in Sweden for twelve years. 

Coming and going
Following his dance education he danced with Ballett der Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf for five years, following by eight years with GöteborgsOperans Danskompani (Gothenburg Opera Dance Company) in Sweden. He had already begun choreographing in Düsseldorf, parallel to his dance career. “Actually I was already making my own little dances as a child, but in Düsseldorf I seized every opportunity to choreograph something. I really love creating and directing.”
He made pieces for the choreography workshops of Ballett am Rhein and in 2006 – which was his final year in Düsseldorf – he received his first official choreography commission from the company. This resulted in Kommen und gehen, und manchmal bleiben (‘Coming and going, and sometimes staying’), a work whose title clearly refers to his own path through life. In the following years, while dancing in Gothenburg, his choreographic activities began to take up ever more time. “I was always juggling to combine the two careers.” In response the dance company offered him a job as a repetiteur, also giving him the necessary freedom to develop a career as a freelance choreographer. 

Dance, opera and film
Since 2014 Melo has devoted his energies fulltime to choreography. In recent years he has worked not only for GöteborgsOperans Danskompani but also for companies such as the Swedish Skånes Dansteater, Aterballetto in Italy, the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, the het New York-based Ballet Hispanico, Luna Negra Dance Theater and Visceral Dance in Chicago, as well as the National Contemporary Dance Company in Korea. He has also created the choreography for various operas and has made a number of dance films, including Nonstop – presented in Amsterdam during the Cinedans festival – and Mahjong, a film that received an Audience Award at the San Francisco Dance Film Festival in 2010. 

Pure magic
Melo says that he doesn’t have a specific, recognisable style of movement. “I let the movement arise from the idea for a production, and that means that I’m constantly varying.” There is one constant, however: he always wants to offer his audience new experiences, often by letting people watch the events on stage from another perspective. Lighting, stage decor, costumes, projections: Melo uses everything he needs to achieve this, but instead of going for the latest high-tech gadgets he prefers to use what he calls ‘old-school theatre resources’. And so mirrors and various props often play an important role in his work. You might say that Melo conjures magic with dance. He lets dancers and parts of bodies suddenly appear, or disappear into nothing, as in the powerful Bate (‘Heartbeat’) which Introdans included in its repertoire in 2009. And in the enchanting Dream Play, part of the GRUPO SPORTIVO programme, he lets dancers fly through the air, walk along a slackline and climb on each other’s heads. It’s pure magic, and as spectator you constantly find yourself being wrong-footed.  

Choreographies by Fernando Melo in the Introdans repertoire: Bate (2009), Dream Play (2019) Traces (2025)