Melodia of Melodia Designs has been designing amazing dance wear and comfortable-AND-sexy street clothes for over 20 years. But do you know about her intriguing dance past with the Belly Dance Superstars and Urban Tribal Dance Company? Listen and find out!

Melodia has been adorning and accenting the beauty in fusion belly dancers and more beautiful movers with her oh so lovely Melodia Designs clothing for almost 20 years.

Melodia has been adorning and accenting the beauty in fusion belly dancers and more beautiful movers with her oh so lovely Melodia Designs clothing for almost 20 years. You probably either own or are coveting your own “Melo’s”, as we like to call Melodia’s textile creations, but not too many of us also know the belly dance life of Melodia Medley. In this podcast, we’ll hear about Melodia’s start as a dancer in a Urban Tribal Dance Co with Heather Stants and Mardi Love, her first memory of Jill Parker, and her year touring the USA with the Belly Dance Superstars.

And Melodia loves to talk about festivals and food and music in addition to wearable art, so this is going to be a very fun interview.

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Touring with the Belly Dance Superstars

I think that was maybe 2004 or 2005. It’s hard to find video or photo documentation of that era, but we traveled 60 cities in 64 days across the U S and Canada. Riding on a shuttle bus with 16 dancers and a crew with an ex race car driver as the chauffeur.

We would show up at a venue in the evening, roll out of the tour bus, do a quick tech rehearsal, get dressed, do our show, pack up, get back in the bus and drive halfway to our next location. So many of us refer to that as the hell tour. Our saving grace though, was the talent. I had the blessing of dancing with Rachel Brice and Sharon Kihara. We kind of were the “tribal girls”. And Jalina she’s so amazing. It was quite the adventure.

https://bellydancebodyandsoul.com/jillina/

And I even played hooky one night from tour.

So I could take a flight into Miami and dance with rabbit on the moon at the ultra music Fest.

https://youtu.be/_cClIlpazdY

We had shower shelves suction cupped to the windows of the bus when we were on tour.

https://bellydancebodyandsoul.com/kaeshi-chai/

“When I put on a pair of Melodia Designs pants, I see I am wearing art.” – Melodia’s mom

Alicia: When did you realize that you wanted to make amazing clothes for dancers and fire performers and other beautiful movers and dance vicariously through your clientele?

Ever since I was a kid I loved playing dress up, and I would often put on little circus performances in my living room. And my grandmother had very elegant taste and she would give me her hand me down night gowns and robes to play in. I often would up cycle them with like a stapler and safety pins and turn it into some sort of princess gown and fly around the living room.

So I guess I was destined to make clothes with performance in mind.

And then after high school, I ended up working retail and I met this really beautiful clothing designer when I was working at the shop. And when she came in to show her collection, I whispered in her ear, “If you ever want someone to work with you, I would love to help.”

And sure enough, she did end up hiring me. And I ended up doing everything from sales to running errands for production, to trade shows, packing orders and folding inventory. So that was a great first step towards getting into fashion. And eventually they closed down shop, and I was left with a turning point in life where I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next. And it just felt like the perfect time to start my own line.

And then in 2000 I discovered belly dance and I turned my focus towards making dance wear.

So it was kind of like combining both of my passions for clothing and dance into one.

And here I am still doing it 20 years later.

Alicia: That was like the heyday for belly dance in the US in the early 2000s.

Yeah. I think I showed up on the scene at the perfect time.

Alicia: Definitely. And you were dancing with Marti Love and Heather Stants?

Dancing with Urban Tribal Dance Company

It’s amazing how many leaps forward we’ve made with like cinematography and posting video. I look back at those old videos and they’re so blotchy.

I’m pretty sure most of the old videos that are uploaded to YouTube were all done on the little handheld camcorder and then converted from videotape into some sort of digital format.

There’s very little video footage of the early days, which makes it kind of magical. You had to be there to see it.

Melodia’s first performance with Urban Tribal Dance Company:

https://youtu.be/yWCrfHgTlLg

Heather Stants talking about he UTDC:

https://youtu.be/rjZ07RGMXTE

Melodia Designs Fabrics

Alicia: I love the Elsa pocket leggings Oracle print so much that I bought two pairs of the same pants so I could just wear them almost every day. They are super soft. I think they are made of tencel? During winter in upstate New York, I also wear your bamboo fleece leggings and layer on some of your super soft organic cotton tops. It makes me feel so damn special when I slip it on. I love wearing form fitting pants that don’t give me a muffin top and make my butt look great, and that’s what you create! I could go on and on. Tell us more about the fabrics you choose for your designs.

Well, I’m a big fan of eco and sustainably produced materials. So as I had mentioned, some of our fabrics are like the tinsel and the muddle.

Why Melodia Uses Bamboo, Organic Cotton, and Tencel

I might not approach the bamboo is super soft and of course, organic cotton. Those are the primary materials that I like to use. And I love them because they’re so soft and breathable and actually anti-microbial, which means that it stays fresh as you wear it.

Fabric made out of polyester ends up in a landfill. All these natural fibers are compostable.

Why Wearing Polyester is Not a Good Idea

Also polyester sheds every time you wash it, tiny little micro particles of plastic end up in our ocean. And I don’t think too many people are aware of that. And that’s another reason why investing in natural fibers is so important. I also love creating exclusive prints.

How Melodia Makes Designs

We’ve been making our own designs with faux assuit and the Oracle design, which is inspired from mehndi. And I actually hired a mehndi artist to create that print and we have some more coming in the future, which I’m really excited about.

I created the faux assuit design with a graphic artist. We basically create a template on our screen that echoes the same honeycomb, textile, like the tulle that assuit is woven onto. Assuit is basically metal fibers woven onto the tulle. So we create a template and then draw the little tabs onto that template. So it’s actually quite accurate, and very similar to what real assuit would be like. The same proportions, the same shape.

In fact, I have an assuit maker in Cairo right now recreating my heavy metal motif into real assuit. So I’m very excited about that. This is something I’ve always wanted to do. To actually test one of my layouts into a real textile.

So that should be coming up pretty soon. I’m really excited about that.

Creating Mehndi Designs for Fabric

But back to the mehndi design. So I’ve gone about it two different ways. I have a friend, Alexis, who’s an incredible artist and she did the mehndi for my wedding. I had her do both of my hands. She draws with actual henna paste onto paper, and then I photograph it and import it into illustrator. Then I have a graphic artist then set up the motif, and get it all ready for rotary printing.

So it literally is like a photograph of real henna.

What Makes You Want to Dance? : Dressing up!

Dressing up makes me want to move. Putting something pretty on always makes me feel good, and that helps inspire movement.

When I go to dance class, I like to dress up.

Putting on a cute outfit always affects how I move. Also, some things like a kaftan with long flowy sleeves can really inspire movement. Or a skirt will make me want a twirl or long sleeves with the assuit print on it inspires some snake arms.

Oftentimes in the design room, me and my girls will put on samples, and get the music going and give it a good test run. Sometimes there’s like twerking in leggings to make sure it passes the squat test. We have lots of fun in the design room. It definitely has to pass the squat test.

Great Dance Music: CloZee’s Harmony – Axel Thesleff Remix

CloZee is super fun to dance to. And there’s some Indonesian gamelan music in this song!

https://open.spotify.com/track/2qNtbvaAjEsbI4R9eRSduX?si=83bf4dc38ab74593

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4bUcyf6Vniazuu8iQwHyob?si=a67b3eb83fd8469b