Melissa James
pilates + barre instructor
Melissa James is a Kiwi (Kia Ora!) from Aotearoa New Zealand. In NZ Melissa enjoyed a successful career as a professional Dancer for many years, while also teaching a variety of different dance modalities to children and adults. She also taught Barre when the concept first arrived in the country. She then spent 4 years in London, UK, with the idea of dancing and travelling. While Melissa did manage to both dance and choreograph in the UK, unfortunately an injury brought her dancing days to a close. Reformer Pilates was incredible for Meliss's injury recovery, and so Pilates became a natural follow-on to her career of movement! Pilates had always been a part of Melissa's dance life, but using it to rehab her injury so well brought about a new passion for the modality, and she decided to complete her Pilates Instructor Certifications in both Mat and Dynamic Reformer Pilates.
Melissa quickly became a popular Instructor, building on all her years experience teaching Dance and Barre. Melissa taught Dance, Barre and Pilates for various schools and studios across the City, but teaching Dynamic Reformer Pilates alongside some of the UK's top Physiotherapists at TEN Health and Fitness was an absolute highlight and huge learning curve for Melissa. Melissa became the Head of TenBarre, and then also the Scheduling Coordinator for TEN - managing all Trainers and Schedules of TEN's 9 busy studios across London. When the pandemic hit, she was integral to the launch of Live Stream and On-Demand platforms.
After moving home to New Zealand mid pandemic where she was able to dive into Auckland's brilliant health & fitness scene again, Melissa has now moved to Collingwood, Ontario, to be with her Canadian partner's family and is very much enjoying being part of the CWood Community. Melissa has been in Collingwood since 2021, and has really enjoyed continuing to grow and learn through another new (for her) Wellness focused community. Teaching Pilates and Barre at cedar+sage is a highlight of this!