Melli Hoppe is the Artistic Director of Susurrus, an Indianapolis based experimental performance group. Melli has lead Susurrus in numerous site-specific productions, including: Sacred Spaces, which was selected as the top dance performance of 1997 by the Indianapolis Star, and most recently, Different Trains, performed at the Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival in 2007. She has co-directed several Susurrus and Theater of Inclusion collaborations for the annual Spirit and Places festival, which received the NUVO Cultural Vision award in 2002.
Melli is currently teaching site-specific theatre and stage movement at Butler University where she co-directed Shades of Sam (five short plays by Samuel Beckett), Yeat’s The Dreaming of the Bones, which toured Ireland in 2003, and Caryl Churchill’s A Mouthful of Birds. She also has directed several original site-specific performances for Butler Theatre including: Memory House, In the Garden, Unreal City, dirty_little_Heart and In the Penal Colony. Melli was the choreographer for Butler Theatre’s productions of Tamer Tamed, Two Noble Kinsmen, Skriker and The Photographer, and was the choreographer Butler University Lyric Theatre’s productions of The Quilters, Dido and Aeneas, Trouble in Tahiti and Company. She also was the choreographer for Indiana University Theatre’s production of Euripides’ Bacchai, and Indiana Repertory Theatre’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Melli has taught dance at various institutions in Indianapolis including; Butler University, IUPUI, Broad Ripple High School, Shortridge Middle School and the Academy of Indianapolis Ballet Theatre. Melli is on the Program Committee for Young Audiences of Indiana and has been involved with Young Audiences as an artist and as the Director of Artist Services.
Melli was awarded a Creative Renewal Fellowship from the Arts Council of Indianapolis to study site-specific theatre with Firenza Guidi in Italy in July 2004. She also was selected as regional artist for the Lewis and Clark ArtsCorps, a cultural development initiative supported by the National Endowment for the Arts in cooperation with The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, the Indiana Arts Commission, the Kentucky Arts Council and the Falls of the Ohio Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Committee in 2003.