"After 10 years in Los Angeles making dances, mostly solos for myself and collaborative works with other dancers, I felt isolated and restless. I came to Bennington to make a change in my work, to find a new direction. The graduate dance program’s self-directed structure, emphasis on making and showing work, and the faculty’s rigorous approach suited me perfectly. I found the space, time, and support I needed to experiment, to learn through failure and success, and to begin to develop the methods and approach I use in my practice today.

"Bennington College attracts the most interesting people. The well-appointed studios and performing spaces were the thing that seduced me when I first visited the campus, but it was the people; faculty, fellow graduate students and undergraduates, whose curiosity, intelligence, kindness and patience, in the end, who made all the difference. So many of these relationships continue in very meaningful ways today.

"After graduation I moved to New York City, where I currently live and work. When I entered Bennington, the degree requirements partially read, 'to make an appropriate amount of work and to show it in an appropriate venue.' For the last 13 years, this vague parameter has guided my choices and has magically led me to form organic relationships with presenters, venues, collaborators, and support organizations."

Melinda Ring makes dances, installations and performance works, that have been commissioned and presented, most recently, by The Kitchen, The Box, Danspace Projects, Headlands Center for the Arts, The Whitney Museum, Mount Tremper Arts, The Santa Monica Museum, and The Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College. Her work has been supported by residencies and grants from many organizations including: Yaddo, Movement Research, Foundation for Contemporary Art (Emergency Grant), Gerald Oppenheimer Family Foundation, Mabou Mines, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (MCAF, Swing Space), Gibney Dance Center (DiP), Headlands Center for the Arts, Chora Council of the Metabolic Studio, a project of the Annenberg Foundation, and, New York Foundation for the Arts (Build Stability). She curated Danspace Project’s Spring 2011 Platform, “Susan Rethorst: Retro(intro)spective,” and their Fall 2012 “Judson Now” Platform program “Dance by Default.” She received degrees from Bennington College (MFA, 2001) and University of California, Los Angeles (BA, 1982). Ring is currently a critic in sculpture at Yale School of Art.