Dominique Melhem is born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1991.
After completing her High School Education at St. Andrew´s Scott´s School, she starts her path in the Arts, Yoga and Community Service.Between 2012-2013, she departs to Brazil, Santa Catarina, to deepen her study and Yoga practice with Pedro Kupfer, where she becomes a certified Hatha Yoga and Integrative Yoga Teacher. Soon after her return to Argentina, in 2014 she departs to Berlin to iniciate her studies in Contemporary Dance and Performance Arts. She completes de Dane Intensive training Program at Tanzfabrik School, where she meets Sigal Souk and Jan Burkhardt, who become her mentors with whom she collaborates in their performance project Fields of Resonances. She also completes the performance training module of P.O.R.C.H program at Ponderosa Center, where she returns during several ocasions to study Contemporary Dance and Improvisation references such as Keith Henessey, Mark Tompkins, Yoshiko Chuma, Meg Stuart, Peter Player, Maria F. Scaroni.
During her stay in Berlin she meets Roland Walter, a German disabled (spastic paralysis) artist and performer, with whom she develops Project ONE (UNO), a performance that encourages inclusion, unity and equality, work that they present in various spaces and art galleries in Berlin, such as Lake Studios. She also becomes a member of ReEnter Company of Japanese Dancer and Choreographer Minako Seki, as well as becoming Minako´s personal assistant. She perfects her improvisational skills through studying Instant Composition method with Julyen Hamilton, Paolo Cingolani and Maya M. Caroll. In 2015 she participates in Ibiza Movement and Performance Festival where she studies intensively with Jules Beckmann.In 2016 she participates in ImpulsTanz Festival in Vienna, Austria where she is part of Benoit Lachambre´s Performance and Research Project : That Choreographs Us.
After that she returns to Buenos Aires to continue her dance technique and performance training, where she studies Assymetrical Motion with Lucas Condró, improvisation with Mathieu Perpoint, modern dance with Diana Scheinblum, classical dance with Roxana Galand, Contact Improvistion with Gabriel Greca, and acting for camera with Edgardo Castro. She is a performer for Alina Ruiz Follini in Centro Cultural Kirchner and for Natalia Tencer in La Casa Nacional del Bincentenario.This same year she joins MOKSHA, a social service project that introduces Yoga in a maximum security prisions in Argentina (Penal de San Martin, Unidad 48), where she teaches Yoga for male inmates for more than 2 years. She also works as a Yoga teacher for youngsters in recovery from drug adiction.
In 2017 she begins her first experience as a curator giving birth to the production of MARATON DE PERFORMANCE: a headline event in Buenos Aires that is a platform which encourages the practice and the reflection on performance-art in its various manifestations. It encourages emergent artists in the field to expose and share their works, in diverse non-conventional spaces. The same year she is selected to be part DanceWeb Scholarship Program in ImpulsTanz Festival, Vienna-Austria, having choreographer Doris Ulrich as a mentor. There, she trains in intensive solo work production with Ivo Dimchev, studies with Jeremy Wade and Marten Spanberg as well as with other pilars of the contemporary art scene. She also participates in More than Naked performance-action in public space directed by Doris Ulrich.Throughout her stay in Argentina in 2016-2017 she recieves two visits from Roland Walter directly from Berlin to introduce ONE performance in Buenos Aires, presenting their work in several spaces such us NN art gallery, HIEDRA art gallery, Peras y Olmos art gallery, Café Muller, Espacio Sísmico, in Fundación Campos del Psicoanálisis etc.
In 2018 ONE performance is selected to be part of Escena Mobile, International Adapted Dance Festival in Sevilla, Spain, where Roland and Dominique perform and win the first choreographic prize.ONE performance is also selected to partake in BIENAL SUR 2019.ONE performance is also selected to perform in the KIADA International Adapted Dance Festival in Korea in 2019.In the same year, Dominique moves to Florianópolis, Brazil, to continue her studies in Yoga in the Florianópolis Iyengar Yoga Center with Pedro Pessoa and Camila de Lucca, iniciating her path on becomming a certified Iyengar Yoga teacher. There she also works as an English and Yoga teacher for kids, in different comunal spaces and public schools. In 2019 she will commence her degree studies in Social Services at UNISUL University.
