Lourdes constantly played Flamenco music as her children were growing up, putting her daughters in dance classes and her son in soccer lessons. She believed in active children and that activity led to what would become Melinda’s passion, dance. As a little girl she did ballet, but when she was about six years old, her mother took her to a Latin class that she was teaching and the little girl fell in love. She knew the music and begged to learn to dance like the girls in the pretty dresses. Lourdes kept her daughter in her class for two years before putting her in other classes, allowing the little girl to learn more and improve her abilities.

Jack humored his daughter when she would come home from dance lessons and prance around the house. She told him when she was ten that one day she was be a star and she would dance on Broadway. Being a typical American father he told her that she could do anything she put her mind to but never really thought it would happen. Her mother, however, knew it could and after a long discussion with Jack put Mel in private lessons. Mel had no life outside of school and dancing, but when she was twelve she started to compete with her partner. The teen had no idea what she was giving up when it came to free time, she’d been dancing her entire life and didn’t question it. She loved it and didn’t miss what she’d never known.

High school was a very normal experience for Mel. She was the skinny surfer girl that spent all her free time in a dance studio. Many of her friends asked how she could be so tan if she was never in the sun and she constantly shrugged or would say it was her Spanish roots. At first glance the girl looks like a typical beach bunny but in the dead of winter her skin doesn’t lighten it gives away the fact she is a bit of something other than middle American. She excelled in her academics and knew she could pick any college she wanted to attend but she still didn’t want to go to school, she wanted to dance. She spent weekends in high school at competitions, summers were spent in dance workshops and she had goals of championships. It was 2006 when she achieved her first dream; she won the Youth Latin Dance Championship. She was excited and danced around the house and school for the next week, telling anyone who would listen that she and her partner Billy had won. She was just shy of graduation and knew that this win would help her argument against her father demanding she attend a university in the fall.

Mel didn’t tell her parents when she got a chance to audition for So You Think You Can Dance? until she was ready to go to the audition. She finally sat her parents down and talked her father into letting her put off university if she could make something of her dancing. Once he agreed, she told them about the audition. She wasn’t sure they would be excited for her, but they were. They went to every taping to watch her dance and when she made it to fourth place it was her father who was most sad that she didn’t get to go past that. She kept telling him it was okay, she didn’t mind really. But she liked that he was so supportive and it was after that last dance that he told her he would support any choice she made toward her dance career. So You Think You Can Dance? took her on a tour of the United States to show off the top ten contestants and their dancing abilities. It was through that tour that she landed a part in Chicago on Broadway as a background dancer.

She was nineteen years old when Mel moved to New York City and started dancing on Broadway. She wasn’t a singer or an actress and she never really wanted to be either. As such, she knew she’d never be the lead in a musical or play but she could still be a part of the background and she could still dance professionally. She got back into competitions and continued the Latin circuit as she worked in New York. She was living in New York for two years before she met Capri Jagger. She stumbled upon her studio and enrolled herself in a couple of the Latin classes, wanting to just do something for fun and not for work. It was through those classes and a mutual friend that she ended up working for the young woman. In class she tried to keep her mouth shut but she wasn’t as successful as she tried to be, she didn’t like the way the instructor was teaching a couple of the dances and refused to do the steps the woman taught. When the teacher confronted her on it, she said simply, “I do this professionally and you’re doing it wrong” it wasn’t the best way to make friends, but it did seem to endear her to the owner.

Now, at 23 years old, Melinda Monaco is living in New York, working on and off Broadway when time allows and teaching at Capri’s dance studio. She holds private coaching lessons for teens who want to compete like she did and still finds herself every so often competing herself, though she doesn’t think she is going to continue to do that as she knows she is getting older and it takes so much of her time, time that she would rather use for other things. She teaches Latin dance more than anything but she can teach multiple ballroom dances. Her favorite dances are always going to be fox trot, Viennese waltz, Argentine tango, paso doble, meringue, salsa and anything Flamenco.