Samantha Mecca

Professor of Dance

---

Bio

Samantha Mecca, throughout her career, has strived to expand and diversify the educational experience for all students. A first-generation university student and the first Latino chair of the Department of Dance (2019-2024), she has developed multi-level collaborations and an extensive career working both inside and outside traditional approaches in education and collaboration. Through her years working in dance as both musical repetiteur and director, she developed the “Kinesthetic Fingerprint©,” as both theory and practice which has enabled her to train musicians who currently work with leading dance companies and company schools across the country.

In the field of dance and music studies, Samantha Mecca has served as musical repetiteur in the staging of dances by Balanchine, Humphrey, Graham, Weidman, Taylor, and Lubovitch, and has accompanied for directors and artists from the New York City Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Cullberg Ballet, Mark Morris Dance Group, Martha Graham Dance Company, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Trisha Brown Dance Company, Miami City Ballet, and many others. Other stage projects include the Dance Legacy Project (co-directed with UM faculty colleague Jillian Hopper), a restaging of George Balanchine’s 1923 work, Marche Funebre (with Dr. Elizabeth Kattner and dancers with Grand Rapids Ballet) and collaborating with director Robert Benedetti in two productions of Marc Blitzstein’s play, The Cradle Will Rock. She has composed works for dance that include a commissioned score for the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, Existence Without Form (2006), and has produced albums of her compositions: Standing Alone: Works for Solo Piano by Phillip Carout (1999), Suites for Dance: Works for Cello and Piano, by Phillip Carout (2001), Etoile Solo Ballet Variations (2006), Music for Modern Dance (2007), and Na Razie, Bez Ciebie (2008).

Her research interests have expanded to include popular music studies, and she has authored The Words and Music of Brian Wilson (Praeger, 2016) and Listen to Psychedelic Rock! Understanding the Music from The Beatles to Frank Zappa (Greenwood, 2020). Her current project is focused on soul music in Detroit from 1968-78 and the Invictus, Hot Wax, and Music Merchant labels founded by Holland-Dozier-Holland following their departure from Motown. She also is researching the music of influential English songwriter and performer, the late Kirsty MacColl.

Samantha has presented at conferences in England, Ireland, Finland, France, Taiwan, Canada, and the United States and has also been a speaker at London’s Royal Academy of Dance. In 2011, she was invited to present a lecture-recital at the Jane Austen House and Museum in Chawton, England, where she performed a selection of music drawn from Austen’s personal music library on the author’s 1810 Clementi piano.

A native of Los Angeles, she earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Southern California, where she studied piano under Bernardo Segall and harpsichord and early music performance under James Tyler and Malcolm Hamilton.

“Christian is an excellent musician. Am sure George would approve.” – Maria Tallchief