ANNE MARIE MELENDEZ, born in Bellflower, California, began her ballet training with Diane Lauridsen at the Lauridsen Ballet Centre. Ms. Melendez has previously performed with the South Bay Ballet, Louisville Ballet, Ballet Pacifica, Nevada Ballet Theatre and is in her fourth season with Ballet Austin.

She has appeared in works by Marius Petipa, Alun Jones, David Parsons, Ron Cunningham, Val Caniparoli, Choo-San Goh, George Balanchine and has had more than twenty original works created for her by Stephen Mills, Charles Maple, Thaddeus Davis, William Whitener, Susan Hadley, Jacques Heim, Robert Sund, Ann Marie DeAngelo, Thang Dao and Gina Patterson. Professionally, Ms. Melendez’s favorite roles have included the girl in red in Val Caniparoli’s Going for Baroque, one of the soloists in Marius Petipa’s Paquita, and Tinkerbell in Bruce Steivel’s Peter Pan.

Ms. Melendez has been proud to represent Ballet Austin on tour to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and in fall of 2005 at the Joyce Theatre (New York City.) In June 2004 Anne married fellow company dancer Paul Michael Bloodgood. As a photographer Anne Marie goes by her married name, Anne Marie Bloodgood and primarily focuses her work on another art form – dance. Dancers spend years studying, training, and fine-tuning their craft, continually striving and pushing themselves to their artistic and physical limits. As a photographer, Anne Marie has a rare perspective into this balance of athleticism and artistry, as she is also one of Ballet Austin’s twenty professional ballet dancers.

“I was first introduced and intrigued by photography in junior high school, but with no photography programs in my senior high school, I was unable to really explore my new interest. My first experience with a professional ballet company was right out of high school with the Louisville Ballet, and this is where I first began seeing moments that I wanted to capture with a camera. Coming from a small ballet school, this was my first up close look at how professionals worked, and how as a dancer you are not only a technician but also an artist. From the Louisville Ballet, I continued on as an apprentice at Ballet Pacifica, joined the corps de ballet of Nevada Ballet Theatre and then finally found a home at Ballet Austin. It wasn’t until my time at Nevada Ballet Theatre that I started taking a few photography classes at a local college and bringing my camera along with me to work. Since then we have been inseparable. It constantly intrigues me, how the same movement or position can look so different from various corners of the rehearsal studio. And then what you thought of it before is turned upside down when you see it onstage from the audience’s perspective, and then again when you see it from the wings.In showing my work my goal was not to show off my photographs, but rather to combine two art forms that can so easily compliment each other, while visually expressing who Ballet Austin is and showcase my co-workers in our art form. To show their strength and vulnerability simultaneously, to temporarily freeze a breathtaking moment that any of them have created. Whether it’s the beautiful shape of a dancer’s legs, a bounding leap from one of our male dancers, the gentleness of how one dancer picks up another’s hand, or the silhouette of a tutu-clad Ballerina, preparing in the wings for her final performance.”

Ms. Melendez has had the opportunity to showcase her photographic work in local venues, including the Ballet Austin studios, as well as at the Bass Concert Hall.