MAKING OF MEMORYHOUSE

This documentary film follows choreographer Melissa Barak as she dives in head first with her creative team to bring a ballet inspired by the Holocaust to emotional life. A post-screening conversation will feature Barak, Holocaust survivors, and Holocaust Museum LA's Chief Impact Officer Jordanna Gessler.

Making of Memoryhouse is a documentary film following choreographer Melissa Barak as she dives in head first with her creative team in order to bring a ballet inspired by the Holocaust to emotional life. Through performance and rehearsal clips, as well as interviews and powerful survivor testimony, we are brought into the creative process where Barak works on building a theatrical dance experience like no other.

Melissa Barak is a choreographer and former professional dancer with New York City Ballet (NYCB) and Los Angeles Ballet. Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, Barak began her ballet training at the age of eight at Westside School of Ballet in Santa Monica, CA. Her training continued in New York City at the School of American Ballet (SAB), the official school of NYCB. In 1998, Barak was invited to join NYCB where she performed in numerous works by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins.

Barak began exploring her choreographic talents throughout her time at SAB and NYCB. At the age of 21, she premiered her work Telemann Overture Suite in E Minor at the SAB June Workshop performance that quickly followed up with encore performances on NYCB the following season. Later that year another choreographic commission was offered by NYCB for their prestigious Diamond Project making her, at the time, the youngest choreographer to create an original work on the company. She has created new works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Richmond Ballet, Dayton Ballet, American Repertory Ballet, Sacramento Ballet, Los Angeles Ballet, and Barak Ballet, a Los Angeles based contemporary ballet company she founded in 2013. Melissa has been awarded the Mae L. Wein and Choo San Goh awards for Outstanding Choreography and has been named a Dance Magazine “Top 25 to Watch”. She was also the inaugural recipient of the Virginia B. Toulmin Fellowship for Women Choreographers through Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU.

Barak was appointed to be the new artistic director of Los Angeles Ballet in August 2022 where she looks forward to ushering in a new era of great dance for the company and the greater Los Angeles arts scene.

Presented in association with Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at The Music Center

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