Room to Dream Big: Melissa M. Young Leads Bruce Wood Dance Dallas into the Future

Change is afoot for Bruce Wood Dance Dallas in its 17^th season, as Melissa M. Young steps into the role of artistic director and Joy Bollinger transitions to resident choreographer and répétiteur. Young brings with her more than 30 years of experience, including working with Wood himself and numerous years spent leading Dallas Black Dance Theatre.

“I’m incredibly grateful for everything those years taught me—not only about dance, but about leadership, people, institutions, audiences, and what it takes to sustain an organization over time,” Young says. “But Bruce Wood Dance Dallas is its own organization, with its own history, culture, and aspirations. I didn’t come here to recreate something I’ve already done. I came ready to listen, learn, and deepen my understanding of the company from the inside, while bringing my own experience, perspective, and imagination to where we might go.”

In 2026-27, BWDD is going to some amazing places. The season features eight programs, including three world and Dallas premieres plus collaborations with Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Turtle Creek Chorale, and Uptown Players.

“One of the things I love about collaboration is that it asks everyone involved to step outside of what is familiar,” Young says. “When our dancers work alongside organizations like these, they’re entering another creative environment—responding to different artists, different disciplines, different ways of working—and that can bring something out of them that we may not see in our own space. Dance in conversation with live music, voices, or theater can create an entirely different experience than any one of those forms might create alone.”

And, of course, collaborations like these expand audiences as well.

“I love that kind of exchange because we’re not simply asking people to come into our world—we’re willing to enter theirs, too,” Young continues. “We have extraordinary arts organizations throughout Dallas-Fort Worth. I think there is tremendous value in not only creating alongside one another, but creating with one another.”

The season began in September with Better Is Peace: 9/11 Remembered Through Song and Dance, a collaboration with Turtle Creek Chorale and the Dallas Chamber Symphony.

In November, Dallas receives Bollinger’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was commissioned in 2025 by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Reimagined for Moody Performance Hall’s proscenium stage and set to the music of Joby Talbot, with animated projection by Courtney Ware, the vibrant, family-friendly production is packed with larger-than-life characters.

2027 enters with “a breathtaking union of motion and sound,” as Young refers to the collaboration with FWSO on Mahler’s Sixth, featuring mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor and conductor Robert Spano at Bass Performance Hall, Jan. 29-31.

MOVE moves audiences to The University of Texas at Dallas in February for a multimedia tour de force, pairing Bollinger’s explosive, athletic choreography with immersive digital art via a collaboration with renowned visual artist JM Rizzi and Ware’s projection design, set to an imaginative score by Levi.Sct.

“MOVE was created to be a collision of worlds: classical versus street, refinement versus raw, control versus freedom,” says Bollinger. “JM Rizzi’s work creates movement and punch, allowing the dancers to become part of the art, intertwined and moving as one.”

The piece is also the highlight of the company’s 17^th anniversary gala at Gilley’s Dallas in April.

But before the gala is the return of the popular WOOD/SHOP to the intimate Charles W. Longcope, Jr. Performance Studio at Bruce Wood Dance Gallery, March 11-14. The perennial fan favorite is directed, choreographed, and performed by BWDD artists.

For two performances in May, BWDD revisits the Kalita Humphreys Theater for its third-annual collaboration with Uptown Players. UNITE embraces love, identity, and belonging while celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community.

May 28-30 brings a rousing, triple-bill season finale to Moody Performance Hall, including the Dallas premiere of Trey McIntyre’s Robust American Love, Robert Battle’s high-octane Bad Dog No Biscuits, and a revival of Bruce Wood’s breathtaking setting of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 3, last performed in 2012.

“What draws me as a curator is pushing expectations—of the dancers, of the audience, and sometimes even of what we think dance can do,” Young says. “I want audiences to discover just how far out onto the edge these dancers can go. It’s easy to think, ‘I’ve seen this company. I know what they can do.’ I want to keep challenging that assumption by placing them in work that reveals something we haven’t seen from them before—another dimension, another quality, another way of communicating.”

In August of 2026, the company was honored with its first grant from The Shubert Foundation, the nation’s largest funder of unrestricted operating support for nonprofit dance and theater.

“To have The Shubert Foundation look at our work and say, ‘We believe in what you are doing,’ is a tremendous vote of confidence—for this company, our audiences, and the City of Dallas,” says Young. “Funding doesn’t make the artistic decisions for us, but it creates room around those decisions. And we want to use that room to dream big. We want to be able to ask, ‘What if?’ A grant doesn’t mean we suddenly get to do everything we can imagine. But it does give some of those ideas a little more oxygen.”

The company’s appointment to the Texas Commission on the Arts Texas Touring Roster for 2026–2028 was also renewed, meaning that communities across Texas are better supported to invite BWDD to perform in their areas.

“A year from now, I don’t need anyone to say, ‘Melissa changed everything.’ That’s not what I’m after,” says Young. “I’d much rather hear, ‘Have you seen what Bruce Wood Dance is doing? Something special is happening there—you want to be a part of it.’ If people are saying that, I’ll know we’re onto something.”

—LINDSEY WILSON