Melinda Sullivan is a Boston- based choreographer, movement coach, and teacher with more than 30 years experience working with singers and dancers. She is Resident Choreographer and Movement Coach at Central City Opera, where she assists on all productions and teaches in their prestigious Young Artist Program. She is also Dance Director at Boston Early Music Festival, leading an international baroque dance company. Other recent work has been seen at Boston Lyric Opera, Odyssey Opera, and Boston University Opera Institute. 

Ms. Sullivan established herself as a dynamic performer in Boston’s modern dance scene, primarily with Beth Soll & Company (1985-1996) after graduating BFA Dance from The Boston Conservatory. She then developed a unique movement and dance program for opera singers at New England Conservatory where she taught and choreographed for 25 years. She is in demand as a teacher of Breath & Body, Stage Presence, Period Dance, and Ballet For Singers. Her classes combine technique and improvisation in a creative way to connect students to their bodies and the space around them. 

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Ms. Sullivan is the Lucy Graham Director of Dance at the Boston Early Music Festival. She danced in her first BEMF production – Henry Purcell’s King Arthur – in 1995. She returned to dance and assist the late choreographer Lucy Graham in all subsequent BEMF opera productions over the next twelve years. In 2008, Sullivan assumed the role of BEMF Ballet Mistress, training dancers and singers in Baroque and Renaissance style and technique. Her first choreography for BEMF was Dido and Aeneas in 2010, following a featured role as the Silent Mover in the 2009 BEMF production of Handel’s Acis and Galatea. Since then she has choreographed extensively for BEMF, including productions and revivals of Charpentier’s La Couronne de Fleurs and La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers, Monteverdi’s Orfeo, and Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona and Livietta e Tracollo.

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