I met Melissa in the fall of 2023 at ConnectArte Espacio Multidisciplinario in Tijuana, Mexico.

I was teaching an open technique class that she attended. Afterward, she and her colleagues from SISU Danza Compañía de Danza invited me to choreograph for their company. I said yes without hesitation.

That spring, we spent five weeks working together. During that process, I found myself drawn to Melissa—not only for her dancing, but for the way she moved through her life. There was ambition there, but also steadiness. A quiet way of carrying things. Our relationship at the time was light and sisterly. We shared space easily, but our lives moved alongside each other rather than deeply together.

Back then, she spoke about wanting to move to New York. I remember thinking it was a beautiful, distant idea—something admirable, but far from my own path. I had no sense that I would eventually find myself there, too.

Time passed. Then, unexpectedly, I began running into her again—this time in the locker rooms at Gibney. Not only were we now in the same city, but we were also taking many of the same contemporary classes. For a while, our meetings were brief: passing smiles, quick greetings, the small recognition that comes from seeing a familiar face in a large place.

One day, we both arrived early to class and finally had the space to sit and talk. The conversation unfolded easily, and before long, we made a simple decision of collaborating together. And just like that, we began our creative process.

Working on this duet gave us something we hadn’t quite had before—time. Time to listen, to share stories, to understand the quiet weight each of us was carrying. She spoke about living far from home, about the complicated tenderness of building a life in a new place while knowing that the ground beneath it might not be permanent. The effort of adjusting to a new culture. The slow work of creating belonging.

Those feelings were familiar to me. In different ways, in a different geography, I had lived them too. Through the process, our conversations folded into the choreography, and our choreography folded back into conversation. What began as a collaboration gradually became something closer.

This time together feels particular because it exists inside a window. Her visa will soon expire, and she will return home. In that way, the work carries a quiet awareness of impermanence.

The duet became a kind of marker for her time here—a way of holding the experience in the body before it changes again. And perhaps also something else: a small gesture forward, a way of leaving the door open for her to return.