Melissa McCartt Smyth has a thing for numbers.
“I love their perfect realism,” says the co-lead choreographer—aka co-Minister of the Moves—of the March Madness March Band color guard. Numbers are key to Smyth’s work as both a member of Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton’s office staff and her side gig as a bookkeeper. They factor also into Smyth’s work as a dancer, a vocation that requires counting to keep tempo and synchrony of movement.
Yet when it comes to MMMB, Smyth sees getting from point A to point B as more than a math principle. The avowed “process nerd” says savoring the process of creating art makes for a better performance.
“The best part of ‘process’ is our shared experience with success and failure, confidence and fear, elation and disappointment – because this brings us all so close to each other in an inclusive conglomerate of a variety of personalities,” says the veteran performer and Lexington native.
Smyth first performed with what would become MMMB in the 2008 Lexington Christmas Parade as part of a troupe of dancers and musicians supporting the newly-formed non-profit business alliance Local First Lexington. A little over a year later, MMMB was officially organized as a non-profit of its own.
It seems Lexington just couldn’t get enough of its newfound community band, and neither could Smyth.
“It was what was missing in Lexington,” she says. “The experimental experience was so delightful, I decided to continue as requests to reassemble rolled in after the Xmas debut.”
Nearly 10 years into what she calls the “ultimate reality show” known as MMMB, Smyth says the band remains a necessary creative outlet for its performers, including herself and fellow MMMB Minister of the Moves, teacher, friend, and kindred spirit Teresa Tomb. Smyth and Tomb have collaborated for over two decades as creative leaders at Lexington’s Mecca Live Studio and Gallery and Rakadu Dance Theatre Company, both founded by Tomb.
“Through thick and thin, I’ve loved this family of humans,” Smyth says of her fellow MMMB performers and friends. “My goal as a minister is to be inclusive to any performer, regardless of skill set. We ministers are always thinking of way to improve our systems to make people feel comfortable.”
That can be a challenge. The material that MMMB performers must learn alternates between simple and complex. Fast-moving choreography can be difficult, requiring the ministers to accommodate different skill sets. That’s where the process comes into play, says Smyth.
It’s all part of living life by the numbers, MMMB-style.