Melli Hoppe
Melli Hoppe is the Artistic Director of Susurrus, an
Indianapolis based experimental performance group. Melli has lead
Susurrus in numerous productions, including: Sacred
Spaces, which was selected as the top dance performance of
1997 by the Indianapolis Star, and most recently, Toward the
Unknown Region, presented in collaboration with Encore Arts in
April 2008. She has co-directed several Susurrus and Theater of
Inclusion collaborations for the annual Spirit and Places festival,
which received the NUVO Cultural Vision award in 2002.
Melli is currently teaching site-specific theatre and stage
movement at Butler University where she co-directed Shades of
Sam (five short plays by Samuel Beckett), Yeats's The
Dreaming of the Bones, which toured Ireland in 2003, and Caryl
Churchill's A Mouthful of Birds. She also has directed
several original site-specific performances for Butler Theatre
including: Memory House, In the Garden,
Unreal City, dirty_little_Heart, In the Penal
Colony, and iFred. Melli was the choreographer for
Butler Theatre's productions of Tamer Tamed, Two Noble
Kinsmen, Skriker, The Photographer,
and Lamentations and was the choreographer Butler
University Lyric Theatre's productions of The Quilters,
Dido and Aeneas, Trouble in Tahiti and
Company, She also was the choreographer for Indiana
University Theatre's production of Euripides' Bacchae, and
Indiana Repertory Theatre's production of A Midsummer Night's
Dream.
Melli has taught dance at various institutions in Indianapolis
including; Butler University, IUPUI, Broad Ripple High School,
Shortridge Middle School and the Academy of Indianapolis Ballet
Theatre. Melli is on the Program Committee for Young Audiences of
Indiana and has been involved with Young Audiences as an artist and
as the Director of Artist Services.
Melli was awarded a Creative Renewal Fellowship from the Arts
Council of Indianapolis to study site-specific theatre with Firenza
Guidi in Italy in July 2004. She also was selected as regional
artist for the Lewis and Clark ArtsCorps, a cultural development
initiative supported by the National Endowment for the Arts in
2003.
Melli has an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College in
Vermont.
Contact Ms. Hoppe