Melody Gamba, PhD, LMHC, BC-DMT
Dr. Melody Gamba (she/her) is a dance artist, educator, researcher, licensed mental health counselor, and board-certified dance/movement psychotherapist. She advocates for inclusive, equitable, and just educational outreach, therapeutic interventions, arts and health initiatives, and social justice programming within her community. Her work is rooted in an arts-informed, embodied framework that centers relationship, self-compassion, collective liberation, and the body as a site of knowledge, healing, reflection, and social change.
Melody holds her Master of Arts in Mental Health Counseling with a specialization in Dance/Movement Therapy from Lesley University and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance from Marymount Manhattan College, where she was awarded the “Silver M” for outstanding leadership and involvement in the MMC community. She completed her doctorate at Lesley University in Counseling and Psychology: Transformational Leadership, Education, and Applied Research. Her doctoral work explored embodied White supremacy, dance/movement therapy, therapeutic relationships, and arts-informed qualitative research.
Melody was the recipient of the Davis Fellowship from Salve Regina University for her thesis research utilizing dance/movement therapy as a tool to dismantle racism and injustice in service learning and was invited to deliver the keynote address “Embodying Brave Space: A Mental Health Informed Classroom” for Salve Regina University’s annual conference on Youth Mental Health in 2019. As a co-founder of the Diversity in Motion Research Collective, she uses principles of psychology, education, and dance theory to create well-rounded, strength-based, trauma-informed, and person-centered embodied experiences. She has co-presented workshops nationally.
Her work infuses heart-centered leadership, self-compassion, relationship building, and collective liberation — where well-being is achieved together through shared responsibility and mutual support — as foundational components of her evolving theoretical framework and teaching philosophy. She collaboratively explores how community engagement grounded in strength-based, trauma-responsive, embodied allyship can influence pedagogy, clinical interventions, leadership development, and public health programming driven by individual and collective narratives.
Melody utilizes her evolving arts-informed, embodied framework and her development of Creative Sensory Inquiry to train leaders, educators, therapists, artists, and community members in deepening self-awareness, building authentic relationships, and cultivating more open and compassionate communities.
Melody focuses on arts-based approaches to public health priorities, believing that consistent access to quality health and wellness services, combined with the arts, fosters healing, long-term systemic change, and thriving communities. As the 2022 Health and Human Services Artist in Residence, embedded in the Rhode Island Office of Health and Human Services, she shared her creative experiences to address specific public health priorities. This residency, part of the Rhode Island Arts and Health Network, aimed to advance the integration of the arts, art therapies, health, and well-being for Rhode Islanders through a unique partnership between the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the Rhode Island Department of Health.
During her six-month residency, Melody utilized her artistic practice, counseling, and teaching experience to develop creative health solutions and outcomes for the Health and Human Services Agency. She focused on the Children’s Behavioral Health System of Care, overdose, addiction, and adult behavioral health. Melody continues to collaborate with the Rhode Island Arts and Health Network and remains actively engaged in arts and health work across Rhode Island, including expressive arts workshops in mental health settings, somatic-based community workshops, and community arts initiatives that center connection, belonging, storytelling, and relational well-being.
Her recent arts and health work includes expressive arts programming in hospital and behavioral health settings, community-based embodied workshops, and the development of intergenerational and veteran-centered arts initiatives. Through projects such as her Community Arts Pilot and its continued development, in partnership with Shri Service Corps and funded in part by the RISCA Arts & Health Grant, Melody explores how poetry, movement, music, visual art, and story-sharing can reduce isolation, strengthen relationships, and create more compassionate communities.
Melody is the past assistant artistic director and company member of Fusionworks Dance Company and has been invited to perform with ESS/Dance Works, SOKOLOW NOW! Anna Sokolow Contemporary Dance Company, Dancing Legacy, and Bill Evans Dance Company, in addition to teaching and choreographing throughout New England and beyond. She has worked as a program therapist at Butler Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, and has served as an adjunct professor and guest lecturer at Framingham State University, Providence College, Pratt Institute, Salve Regina University, and Lesley University.
Melody is a member of the American Dance Therapy Association and has previously served on the Multicultural and Diversity Committee as well as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force. The organization awarded her the “Leader of Tomorrow” in 2019. Lesley University awarded her the Presidential Scholarship to advance her research on using the arts to evoke equitable and just social change.