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- [00:03]
Alicia Graff Mack
Stephen Melendez's personal journey to the stage is extraordinary. At the age of seven, he and his family were evicted from their home and moved into a New York City homeless shelter for women and children, where they stayed for three years. During this period, he was introduced to dance through Project Lift. One might say dance saved the current artistic director of New York Theater Ballet's life and gave him a sense of belonging.
- [00:30]
Stephen Melendez
If you go into a ballet class anywhere on the planet, it doesn't matter if you speak that language. The class is going to start with plies and you find a community immediately. There's probably something psychological about that. For me, with my background, the idea of having a community was really special, I think.
- [00:47]
Alicia Graff Mack
You're listening to Moving Moments, the podcast that explores the dance world's most accomplished and groundbreaking artists. I'm your host, Alicia Graff Mack Dean and director of Dance at the Juilliard School. During each episode, you'll hear me talk with some of my closest friends and most trusted colleagues as we sit down to hear about their creative process and how they are changing the dance world on and off the stage.
- [01:17]
Stephen, it's so awesome to have you here on Moving Moments. Thank you so much for your time.
- [01:23]
Stephen Melendez
It's super neat to be here. Thanks for having me.
- [01:25]
Alicia Graff Mack
In the fall of 2023, Lift, your award winning documentary based on your journey from childhood to stardom, was finally released on Apple TV and Amazon prime for everyone to experience. Did you ever think that you'd be a movie star, a star of the screen, or someone who appeared in people's homes?
- [01:48]
Stephen Melendez
Not at all. Not even a little bit. I spent so much of my childhood trying to convince my mother and the rest of my family that being a dancer was a real thing. And the idea that now there's a film about my life is totally wild.
- [02:04]
Alicia Graff Mack
This is crazy. I just kept thinking as I was watching, how did they know to capture these moments? And were you aware from those days that eventually this would become a film?
- [02:18]
Stephen Melendez
No, not at all. You know, it's an interesting thing. When I was younger, I was unique, I guess, you know, or maybe it was just because the press liked the story story, you know, this idea of a homeless boy being a ballet dancer in New York. And it was everything I could do to get a review in a newspaper or a TV show or something for some performance I'd had. And every single time, it felt like they found a way to shoehorn that little tidbit of my backstory in, you know, it was like, I don't know, it was almost like voyeurism or gawking at the. At the oddity in the ballet world. So there was a lot of press following around already when I was younger. And when David decided he wanted to make a film about all of this, he followed me around for 10 years. And I think the benefit of that amount of time is that in the film, ultimately, it really shows an incredible journey.
- [03:11]
Alicia Graff Mack
That's beautiful. I wonder, coming into the dance world and being part of the classical ballet world, what was it like to have your daily routine with your family living in a shelter and then getting on the train, commuting, going to New York City, putting your tights and your valley shoes on? I think of it as like putting your Superman outfit on and continuing on with your day. What was that duality or living that life on a day to day basis like, as a young person?
- [03:48]
Stephen Melendez
It was difficult, but, you know, it was. It was the kind of difficult that I can look at now in hindsight and recognize. But at the time, it was the only reality I knew. And so at the time, it was very normal. I think of the New York City subway as like a little magic tunnel. You know, I'd get on the train at Hunts Point in the South Bronx, and I swear to you, I was a different person walking through the streets in the South. I held my body differently, I spoke differently, I, you know, my. My clothes fit me differently. And I got on the train and something along that journey before I got off downtown on 33rd and Park Avenue, you couldn't be more fancy than Park Avenue. And when I got off the train, I. Everything about was different. I stood up straighter and my speech pattern was more articulable and, you know, my pants were pulled up high, and it was just. It was a totally different thing. But my mother was, I think, really good at protecting me from the reality of the world. I went to school in Manhattan as well. She lied on our residency for the Department of Education so that I was zoned into a school that was actually in Manhattan, not in the Bronx, and that was all fake. But whatever, you know, that's what she did. It worked out for us. And so I'd leave home at, I don't know, six in the morning or something to get downtown in time for class. And I'd go from school directly to ballet, and ballet class would get out at, I don't know, 8:30 maybe. By the time I got home, it was just in time to go to sleep. You know, I spent very little time. If we could help it actually, quote, living in the South Bronx, even though we literally slept there every night. And I think my mother did that on purpose. If there was an excuse or a reason to go out and do something else, we would do it. And I really respect that. Especially now, as an adult person, looking back, recognizing all of the possible ways that life could have gone wrong for me, you know, just looking at the statistics of the people that grew up in that. In those areas, you know, people that fit exactly who I am or who I was at that time. So, yes, absolutely, the Superman outfit is a good way to put it.
- [06:01]
Alicia Graff Mack
I always felt like when I spoke to my mom about the things that I was dealing with as a young dancer, somehow she would always turn it on the other side and say, but that's what makes you special. That's what's going to make your legacy. That's what's going to make people want to watch you, Alicia, because you have something different to share. Because that's God's gift. Amazing to look back and understand that level of support. Some of it comes from fear, you know, now being a mom, I say things out of my deep worry and anxiety of my kids being exposed to the world too soon without the tools to understand. It's also a way to fortify with that cape on your back, to know that you can become something bigger than yourself for bigger reasons.
- [06:51]
Stephen Melendez
Yeah, it's an interesting thing, that idea of protection. I think you're right. I'm not a parent, but I think I can understand the fear, the abject terror that a parent might feel having their child out in the world, especially when they recognize that their child is approaching the world from deficit and that the world is not a particularly forgiving place.
- [07:16]
Alicia Graff Mack
What was it like as a young person navigating these very disparate worlds?
- [07:22]
Stephen Melendez
Well, honestly, I ran away. I moved to South America when I was just a teenager, taking a contract there a lot, because I was trying to prove still to my family that being a dancer was a real thing. You know, I remember coming home with that contract and I said to my mother, look, even people on the other side of the planet think that I'm a good dancer, you know, and it was. It was like one of those moments that you have with your parents. And I left only seven days later. I gave her almost no notice that I was leaving the country. And I regret that now. But I think it speaks to that dual world thing in my community. You know, a Hispanic boy growing up in the South Bronx, you know, the options were baseball or College. So I ran away. I was 18, I think, or 17 or something. And I moved to South America, and I was there for a year. And while I was there, the company toured all over the world. I can't say that extremely enough. And it was such an opportunity for me to see every conceivable culture and their relationship to dance and to see all of the ways that I perfectly fit in in some places and absolutely did not fit in others. And I really grew a lot. They were really formative years for me. And immediately after that, I moved to Estonia, to Eastern Europe. I mean, as close to Russia as you could get without actually being in Russia, right? You know, I wanted to get that Vaganova training, that real classical training in ballet. But it goes without saying, Estonia is a very white place. And actually, I had not even landed yet from the plane, and already the flight attendant on Estonian Airlines, she came to me while I was sitting in my seat, and she said, how long are you going to be in Estonia? And I said, oh, I'm moving here. And she goes, oh, well, you know, I am Estonian and I love my country, but you should just be careful when you go out in the street. I didn't know this, but that summer they had been having some protests or something, I don't know. And I was in the country for just a couple of days before people were shouting at me in the street to go home and wondering what I was doing there at every turn. But Estonia is a very small country, and I was a principal dancer in the company there, and people actually got to know me. You know, I was the only one of my kind in the entire country, I think. And that changed. I was there for three years, and a couple of years in, I'd go to the bar and be, oh, that's the dancer. How you doing?
- [09:57]
Alicia Graff Mack
Oh, that's amazing.
- [09:59]
Stephen Melendez
And it was such a. Such a wild thing to see how classical dance was perceived as a sort of. The best way I could describe it is. It's the way we think about, I don't know, like, Taylor Swift or something, like real rock stars. People that, you know, you walk into a place and you say you're a ballet dancer and they really respect you and they want to know more, and they. They just are so interested. Whereas in the US Especially in New York, you tell somebody you're a dancer and they go, yeah, but what's your job? You know, it's a totally different relationship. Not to mention that there's an inherent disconnect of being a person of Color. I mean, the classical world, you know, tell somebody you're a dancer here and they go, oh, you must dance for Ailey. So it's a. You know, it's a different. It's a different thing. I think through the process of making the film, though, I started to understand that the story, my background and the experiences that I've had are worth telling. I spent so much time running away from them, trying to hide them, just trying to blend in like everybody else. I'm trying to be the best code switcher I could be. And David, you know, he's the filmmaker. He followed me around for 10 years with that camera. And I think it's through the process of making the film that put me where I am right now. Every time he wanted to interview me, and every time he showed up again with his camera, the film, every innocuous thing, he wanted to follow me into the dressing room, into the bathroom, onto the stage, into the air, like all these weird places. I said, david, you gotta chill out. And he would say, yeah, but people have to know this story. And his dedication to telling this story trained me to understand that the story was worth telling.
- [11:39]
Alicia Graff Mack
That's so beautiful. I mean, I feel like we can look back on our early years, our childhood, or the beginnings of a professional career, and, you know, write it down in a journal or reflect upon it in conversation. But to know that you're documenting it in real time, I feel like is a different type of reflection that must be so powerful. And then to share it on such a broad stage. I can't even imagine how that affects how you walk through the world. Especially in the dance hall.
- [12:20]
Stephen Melendez
I walk through it. I walk through the world timidly. That's the best way to describe it. Any kind of confidence that I had as a stage performer is absolutely gone when I'm off the stage. I'd much rather be alone in a dark room somewhere reading a book or watching TV than being in front of people. I'm the most anti social person on the planet.
- [12:47]
Alicia Graff Mack
I feel that way too, which is odd that I would have a podcast that I talk to people and ask them about their lives. Maybe that's what it is. I get to talk about other people's lives and not so much my own.
- [13:00]
Stephen Melendez
Well, there's something about pretending, right? At least for me. I mean, I loved being the prince or being another cavalier, you know, something like that. It was. It was such an interesting fantasy to play out. Totally opposite from my childhood or my, you know, my upbringing, which I think honestly is the problem, I say the problem, like capital P, the problem with classical ballet is that the stories are so far removed from the lived experience of so many people.
- [13:32]
Alicia Graff Mack
I would love to learn more about your moving moments, the seeds of inspiration for making dance part of your life. Can you remember or share with our audience what it felt like when you danced? Why you made the decision to dedicate your life to movement?
- [13:57]
Stephen Melendez
I'll tell you a couple of stories. I guess the first time I was on stage in front of an audience. Well, maybe not the first time I was on stage, but the first time I'd done a ballet, of course, it was the Nutcracker, right? Every ballet dancer's first performance is the Nutcracker. And at the end of the performance, I got to take a bow. And I remember thinking that it was the most incredible thing that a room full, a theater full of people would clap for me, you know, that they would recognize me, they'd applaud me, they'd cheer for me. And I think it stroked my ego in a way that was really dangerous. It was really great.
- [14:28]
Alicia Graff Mack
Great.
- [14:29]
Stephen Melendez
So there was that moment that I remember really, really well that drove me. And even as, you know, after I was an experienced performer, still coming out on stage at the end and receiving those accolades were. Was really special for me. As I got a little bit older, I was talking earlier about getting to travel and seeing the world. Maybe I can't think of a specific moment, but seeing the world through the lens of dance, which sounds strange to say, but the truth is that if you go into a ballet class anywhere on the planet, it doesn't matter if you speak that language or if you are from that city or whatever, you fit right in. And the class is going to start with plies, and it's going to go to Tondus. And that's the way it goes. And you sort of. You find a community immediately. And, you know, there's probably something psychological about that for me, with my background, but the idea of having a community was really special. I think as I got older, I started to realize the social impact that dancers or performers could have on the community around them in little ways. And some of them, you recognize that impact immediately, and some of them you don't. And here are two stories where I was able to recognize the impact immediately. I was performing as a guest dancer in, I think we're doing the Nutcracker, actually, maybe out in California, in Fresno, California. And after the show, there was a Q and A or meet and greet, and I was sitting at a Table, you know, with. With my Sugar Plum and a bunch of other cast members. And we were signing autographs and this little girl came over. She must. Couldn't have been more than six years old. She was a little black girl, and she had cornrows beautiful. And she had her beautiful ballerina tutu on. You know, she'd come to the show, I guess, with her grandmother or maybe older mother, I don't know, some older woman. And she was doing that thing that little girls do, you know, where they hide between the legs of the parent, you know, and they're too shy to come out around and poking through. And the woman she was with kind of coaxed her into coming up and talking with me. And eventually the little girl came over and she was so shy, and she beckoned for me to bend over so she could whisper something in my ear. And she whispered in my ear, she said, I've never seen a black prince before. And I thought, how incredible that this young girl, so young, I mean, she really couldn't have been more than six years old, could even register that she had never seen a black prince before, that she recognized that there was a difference between black princes and white princes. And then she had the understanding of the world around her to recognize that she had never seen one before and that it was impactful for her. I don't know what became of that young girl. Perhaps she joined a ballet company, maybe she didn't. I don't know what. But that was really powerful for me to that the moment of magic on the stage that we hope for as dancers, as performers in something like the Nutcracker, which is all about magic, of course, could really, really translate to a real life impact for this little girl. So that moment sticks out in my mind a lot as being a proof that representation matters. And then another moment that sticks out to me in a similar way, but in a way that sort of helped me understand the perspective of my mother, which. Whom, you know, it's not a perspective that I often find myself trying to understand. You know, she was a single mother. We grew up in the South Bronx. And she had me in a ballet program, principally because she couldn't afford daycare, and she worked a couple jobs and I couldn't be home alone, you know, at the end of the day. And I really, honestly, I think that was the only reason she put me in a ballet class. So I was doing a Q and A at a program in Flint, Michigan, for a program they had called Super Saturdays. And I think the plan is that they Bring children in from the community, which is principally black and brown community and poor communities. The director of the program asked me to come and do a Q and A one Saturday because I was in town doing a guest thing, and she'd heard about my story. And so I went in and I was all ready to talk to these kids and tell them about, you know, how cool dance is and they should stick with it and all the boilerplate stuff you tell little kids. Right, right. And I showed up, and I realized that actually I wasn't going to be speaking with the kids because the kids were all in the program. I was going to speak with the parents who were in the waiting room, for which I was not prepared at all. And I thought, oh, okay, I'm talking to adults. Reframe all of this. And how do I say stuff to adults afterward? One of the parents. The very first question from one of the parents was, what do I tell my friends when they bully me? And I said, oh, you got to tell your daughter that if she's being bullied, that they're not really her friends. So, again, boilerplate stuff like Anti Bullying 101. What do you tell a child? And she interrupts me and she goes, no, no, no. What do I tell my friends who bully me for having my daughter in this program? And I realized, oh, there's. There's a cultural sort of stigma against the idea even of lifting oneself up. And overcoming that cultural stigma is really difficult. And it takes a lot of courage on the part of the adults in the lives of these children who, you know, we're hoping that the children have better futures, but how can they have a better future if the adults in their lives are pressured against these kinds of programs? So, anyway, it's. These two stories really stick out in my head a lot. As I said earlier, reasons why representation matters. And there's reasons why it's important to do the work, to really do the work day in and day out and to be okay with having impact on the scale of single digits or maybe dozens. You know, it's great if you can affect 20,000 people, but it's also great if you can affect one person.
- [20:13]
Alicia Graff Mack
Steven, could you talk a little bit about your decision to move back to the United States and just illuminate for us how you transitioned into becoming an artistic leader, especially in New York City. What were the steps that led you back to New York and wanting to return to New York Theatre Ballet?
- [20:36]
Stephen Melendez
Yeah. This is an intersection of all of the best laid hopes and dreams and reality. My Mother was diagnosed with cancer and she was very sick. And I was living in Europe at that time. And I said, oh, yeah, I'll come back. I'll come back to New York. You know, we'll be together. And she said, she goes, well, you're not a doctor. What are you going to do? You should. You should stay there, and if I need you, I'll call you. It's that simple. And I said, okay. And so I stayed in Europe for a little while. And eventually she called and she said, okay, it's time to come home. And I came home and I came back and she passed away just five or six months after that. But I moved back to New York and New York Theater Ballet gave me a job, you know, on sort of a short term basis, like an emergency contract, basically. And while I figured out what I was going to do next and I kind of found myself floating around a little bit, I couldn't bring myself to leave New York again, to go back to finish the career that I was pursuing in Europe, because I felt like I needed to be near my sister. But also there wasn't anything for me to do in New York really at that time. And so I learned about the fantastic world of freelancing, which actually worked out for me really well. I really had a lot of connections at that time. As I said, I traveled really all over the world dancing, and I was doing galas and festivals and all kinds of things. New York Theater Ballet took me on full time. And because I grew up there, I knew a lot of the rep already, so I didn't need to actually be in New York very much. And so I was really lucky. I think I was on the road something like 26 weeks a year, freelancing in and out of New York. And then, as you know, you might imagine, I tore both of my calves in a rehearsal. I tore them in like the most ridiculous way. It was running. It was a running entrance across the. Across the stage. And I felt it and I said, oh, okay, that doesn't feel right. And I tried to dance through it, but, you know, you don't. You don't win that battle. And so that was the end. And by then I started teaching a little bit and choreographing a little bit. And out of the blue, I was called up and asked to fly out to New Mexico to learn about the National Dance Institute in New Mexico, which I did. And I loved the mission there because it was the mission of the LIFT program. It was a mission of the program that had come from at New York Theater Ballet. And it was on a huge scale. And they. They wanted me to take over this entire program in Albuquerque. That was really massive. So I went from being a dancer and a teacher to being an artistic director immediately. The learning curve for me was significant. It was extreme. I learned about being in an office all day, and I learned about spreadsheets, and I learned about, like, all this random stuff that was really critical to the job of being an administrator.
- [23:38]
Alicia Graff Mack
Was that interesting for you, or was that, like, the mundane, you know, have to do it even though you're cringing through it?
- [23:47]
Stephen Melendez
It was very interesting to me. I think it woke a part of my brain that had been dormant as a dancer. And in fact, to this day, I love a good Excel spreadsheet. I would sit with a spreadsheet any day. I love it. I love the formulas. I love when you can link spreadsheets to other spreadsheets. It's amazing. It's the coolest thing on the planet. And then Covid happened, right? And that was. It was interesting because it was an opportunity for me, who I was already on my own learning curve, but now, suddenly, everybody else in the world was brought down to my level. Everyone was reinventing something, so I was reinventing myself, and everyone else was also reinventing how to do things. And shortly after that, Diana, the director at New York Theatre Ballet, decided she wanted to retire, and she called me and asked me to come and take her post. So I took over for her last year. She'd been in that role for 45 years. And now we're a couple seasons into my tenure at New York Theatre Ballet as artistic director.
- [24:50]
Alicia Graff Mack
Incredible. How beautiful that your path has been somewhat clear. Or is it a situation where you look back now and you can say, oh, I see now that my steps.
- [25:02]
Stephen Melendez
Were ordered, my biggest fear on the planet is complacency. I didn't know that word when I was much younger. And as soon as I learned that word, I immediately said, oh, that. That's exactly the problem. Myself becoming complacent and the sensation that I'm standing still. And I think I have known this about myself in real time since forever. So if the question is, could anyone have predicted that I would be where I am now, doing what I'm doing, I don't know that that's true, but I think it would absolutely have been predictable that I would be doing something, because I'm always doing something because I can't stand still.
- [25:43]
Alicia Graff Mack
Talk to me a little bit about when you received that call from this buyer about taking on her legacy. How did you feel about taking on something so historic and so important, not only to the fabric of New York City and the world, but to your life?
- [26:04]
Stephen Melendez
Those are two very different questions. The part about it being related to my life, I don't think I have a particular feeling about. I think two things. For the same reason that when I was younger, I spent a lot of time running away from being defined as being the product of an outreach program, you know, trying to make a name for myself that was independent of everything else. I think that I have done enough now as an adult person outside of New York Theatre Ballet, that I have the proof or the evidence or the confidence to say New York Theatre Ballet was incredibly important for me. But also I think I would have done something even if Nurik Theodor Ballet weren't there. And so I don't feel beholden or obligated to repay or anything like that, if that makes sense. Yes. And so that allows me to approach my work at NYTB kind of objectively. And, you know, the benefit that I have is that I know the history of the organization very well, and I know what has worked and what hasn't worked in the past. And I think my understanding of the dance community, the wider dance community, because I've been outside of New York Diraway for a long time as well, lets me see what direction we need to go, what hole we need to fill that currently isn't being filled. So even though I have fear, incredible fear every single day, I also am very, very optimistic. And I'm very confident that so long as everybody just does what I say, everything is going to be fine. That's sort of. You're the head of an important thing. I know you have to feel that way.
- [27:47]
Alicia Graff Mack
You do. You have to believe in the thing that you believe in. And part of the job of the director is to create the atmosphere where everyone also feels that way and are guided by a larger mission. It can't be about what you want. It has to be about what's best for the company, for the dancers, and for the world at large. Yeah.
- [28:11]
Stephen Melendez
Something I say to the dancers often. I say this to dancers, I say this to funders, I say this to everybody that will listen. I am interested to work with people who are interested to work with me, which is to say I'm really upfront about what my goals and my ambitions are and what my vision is. And if that appeals to you, please, let's work together. Let's do something together. And I Think that if we're both on the same page about getting to where we want to go, and that's shared vision, then we'll be able to overcome any obstacle. That's not going to be a problem. But if we're not on the same page about where we're going, I really don't want to waste my time.
- [28:45]
Alicia Graff Mack
And what are those goals and visions and missions?
- [28:49]
Stephen Melendez
I think that the key to the future of classical dance is accessibility. I think that classical dance needs to be accessible to every single person. I think that there are a handful of ways that it is not currently accessible, and I'm trying to tackle them one at a time until they're all taken care of. I think that in order to have a more diverse group of people on the stage, we need to first diversify the audiences. I think that diversifying the audience is absolutely the most important thing. And I think for a long time, the common way of thinking about this space has been to diversify the schools, the academies, to do outreach programs for children that bring up a new crop of young people that can diversify institutions and organizations and ultimately the whole industry. And the thing that I think is flawed about that way of working is that it takes too long because there are too many leaks in that system. We all know you'd get a thousand little dancers in a room, and maybe 100 of them graduate the school. And of those hundred, maybe 50 of them actually get a job. And of those 50, maybe 10 actually do anything. And if we're getting those kinds of leaky systems, there's no way that we're going to be able to make a generational shift anytime soon, let alone possibly ever. This is the problem. I would much rather approach the anecdote that I think every single dancer has some version of, and it has to do with how the adult in that child's life introduced them to a thing. And so my thinking is, why don't we create the scenario where all different kinds of people are in the audience to introduce the child to the thing?
- [30:53]
Alicia Graff Mack
Yes.
- [30:53]
Stephen Melendez
Because in that way, not only do we diversify the audiences, which is important because it holds us accountable to what we put on the stage, but then we diversify the group of children coming in, because those are the children that get inspired to become dancers. And for everyone in the audience that's not going to become a dancer. We diversify our donor base, we diversify our board members, we diversify our funders, and even our administrative staff. You know, people that go, well, I'm a lawyer. Why Don't I become a lawyer for the arts instead of a lawyer for the big oil company? So I think the audience is where the key is. This is exactly the iteration that I'm in the middle of building for New York Theatre Ballet's LIFT program. LIFT has been around for over 30 years, I think 35 years now, and it has an incredible track record of working with underprivileged children from homeless and home insecure places in New York City and introducing them to classical ballet. And the problem comes just what we were talking about earlier, that the onus, the burden of the code switching is on the child. Yeah, the child is the one who has to live in their community and be one kind of person and then come to the ballet world and pretend to be a different kind of person. And the reason is because in the community that they're coming from, often, not always, but certainly was the case in my, in my home, being a dancer wasn't a thing. And, you know, the child is at home 168 hours a week. That's a lot of influence on a young mind, telling them that ballet's not a thing, it's not the space for them. And the only people that make it there are superstars. Imagine the burden for the child to think, well, if I'm not Misty Copeland, then I'm not going to be anybody. And that's really, that's really difficult for a child. So if we can engage the adults in the lives of the children that we're targeting through our outreach work and get the adults on board with being supportive, and I think we can be much more successful with the outreach programs that we already have. And there are lots of really great ones around the country.
- [32:54]
Alicia Graff Mack
Stephen, you strike me as someone who wakes up on a mission. When you open your eyes and think about the day ahead, what goes through your mind?
- [33:04]
Stephen Melendez
That's an interesting question. I like to separate the work from the play. That's the first thing I make sure to make time for both. And I like to separate the work into the fires. The things that I need to do right now from the long term planning, the things that I need to do for later, the seeds that I need to plant now so that I can cultivate the crop later. And I think having these three categories, you know, what do I need to do right now, what do I need to plan for the future, and then how do I take some time for myself, are the way I try to approach as many days as often as possible. And by doing that, I find myself often having gone two, three, four, five weeks in a row without, quote, a day off, but not actually feeling like I'm overworked or stressed or tired or anything. Because within every day to find time to do something for me is really important. And within every day to make sure that I'm not constantly jumping from one fire to the next fire to the next fire is also really important. Because when the work that you're doing is taking advantage of something that you put into motion a long time ago, it feels really rewarding.
- [34:22]
Alicia Graff Mack
Yes, I love that I have so enjoyed having this conversation with you and having the time to listen. Thank you so much.
- [34:31]
Stephen Melendez
Thank you. Thank you.
- [34:33]
Alicia Graff Mack
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Moving Moments. If you like what you heard, please tell your friends about it.
- [34:40]
Spread the word.
- [34:41]
Be sure to follow the show, rate us, and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. To keep up with future episodes, follow us on Instagram at Moving Moments Podcast and Visit us at artfulnarrativesmedia.com Tune in next month as we hear another inspiring artist's moving moment.