Meet the Aussie dancer chosen to run one of the world’s most prestigious dance schools

At 13, Melissa Toogood took a deep breath and made a call that changed her life.

The teenage dancer from Campbelltown had just watched students from Newtown’s School of Performing Arts at the annual Schools Spectacular. She was blown away.

Sydney dancer Melissa Toogood has been appointed to head up the dance division of Juilliard School.Credit: Wolter Peeters

“I called the school and I asked to audition,” she says. “I was scared. But, hey, it paid off.”

She was accepted and began taking her first steps towards an international contemporary dance career.

“You can’t wait for an opportunity to come your way. I’m a shy person, but when it’s mattered, I’m willing to put myself out there,” she says.

Three decades on, Toogood’s stellar career has just taken a giant leap. She has been appointed dean and director of the Juilliard School’s dance division in New York, one of the world’s leading performing arts institutions.

She will be responsible for nurturing a new generation of contemporary dancers and will have up to 90 young dance students under her wing. It will mean largely moving away from performing, but at 43, she is ready to step out of that limelight.

“I still want to live an artful life,” she says. “But I don’t want to be the one making it all the time any more. I’ll be able to put together all these skills that I’ve already been working on into one job, at a time when I feel more inspired to help other artists with their careers than my own.”

Toogood has spent most of her career in New York. She went to the United States at 18 to pursue her dance studies, and since then she’s worked with many leading dance companies and choreographers.

She was a member of the innovative Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and was among the last group of dancers to be trained by the legendary choreographer. Toogood also began teaching at his invitation.

She received a major New York dance award in 2015 for her performances which were described as “precise and fluid, elegant and electric”.

Offstage, Toogood has worked as a rehearsal director, artistic associate, choreographer, teacher and been on the faculty at Princeton University, Rutgers University and New York Theatre Ballet School.

It’s a long way from growing up in a sports-loving family in Sydney’s western suburbs.

“My parents put me in dance when I was really little because it’s just something you did,” she says. “It just happened that it really spoke to me, and I was committed to it from a very young age.”

She credits her career to Australia’s public education system, and especially to Newtown School of Performing Arts.

“It’s a public school, so it was free – which was the only way I was going to be able to go,” she says.

She believes arts education should be available to everyone.

“Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to fulfil my potential,” Toogood says. “It encourages creativity, critical thinking and empathy. As we move forward, all these things are skills that kids will need.”

She returned to Sydney more than two years ago in the aftermath of the pandemic. Since then, she has worked with Sydney Dance Company, Bangarra, Seet Dance and Victorian College of the Arts.

Now she’s ready to return to the Big Apple along with her American visual artist husband, Kenneth E. Parris III, and their seven-year-old son. She takes up the appointment on July 1.

She acknowledges being nervous about her new role – just as she was as a plucky 13-year-old – but relishes the chance to give back.

“I’ll be setting the vision for the school and be a mentor to the students … and really help them mature as artists.”

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