Artistic flair in sweet spotlight

Christmas seems to be a key time of year for Amanda Green, no matter what line of work she chooses.

At this time 12 years ago, Green was the principal dancer for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, performing the role of Clara in the company’s annual production of The Nutcracker. Today, she’s a busy chocolatier, making and delivering products via her one-woman business, Melt Chocolate Company.

Production ramps up around events like Valentine’s Day, Easter and Mother’s Day. The 40-year-old typically unveils a new collection of bonbons to coincide with each new celebration.

In the fall, she created six new flavours for this Christmas: clementine, raspberry cherry kirsch, cranberry pink peppercorn, peanut brittle, eggnog vanilla bean and gingerbread caramel.

Each bonbon is made using Green’s signature blend of chocolate, which is 73 per cent cocoa and combines beans from Peru, Santo Domingo and Ecuador. She named the blend Enso, taking the name from a circular Zen Buddhist symbol that represents the beginning and end of life.

Green also offers a few signature chocolate bars, plus hot chocolate stir sticks — beautifully designed chocolate cylinders that will melt in your hot beverage, paired with chocolate-covered marshmallows that she makes in-house.

The bonbons, however, are Melt’s signature offering.

“Probably thousands,” Green says when asked how many she’s made over the last six weeks. “So I have to be very meticulous and very organized.”

It’s 9 a.m. on a Tuesday, nine days before Christmas, and Green’s mother is watching her four-year-old son, Jasper, so Green can head to her small commercial kitchen on Clifton Street in Winnipeg’s West End neighbourhood to continue filling orders.

Melt does not have a storefront. Customers place orders via the company’s website and social media accounts, and Green arranges pick-up or drop-off once the chocolates are ready.

Green is also a part-time Pilates instructor. Her time as a ballet dancer came to a halt almost 13 years ago after a career-ending injury, an experience she describes as physically and mentally challenging. She’s glad she’s been able to transition into two careers that she loves just as much as dance.

“I get to help people with their bodies … through Pilates, and I get to have that artistic outlet and passion through chocolate,” Green says. “I’m really fortunate. I love what I do and it really doesn’t feel like work.”

Born near Edmonton, Green spent her formative years in the west-central Alberta town of Rocky Mountain House. When she was 10 years old, she and her older sister moved to Winnipeg to train at the RWB School.

She joined the RWB in 2004, and had leading roles in Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Dracula before being appointed to the top rank of principal dancer in 2012. In 2013, she married fellow dancer Eric Nipp. Green’s plan was to continue her dance career while having a child or two along the way.

“Life did not hand us those cards,” she says.

Green started experiencing minor knee problems in October 2013. Compensating for that pain led to other weak points in her body, and eventually she started feeling severe hip and back pain. She did her best to maintain her body by focusing on her placement and being aware of her weight distribution.

In February 2014, as Green danced in one of the title roles of Romeo and Juliet, the accumulation of injuries resulted in a hip injury. Green finished the performance, which would ultimately be her last.

Later, she would find out she’d torn her hip as a result of a previously torn labrum, which pinched her femoral nerve. She travelled to Hamilton for surgery and rehabilitation.

Green eventually recovered, but her ballet career was over.

“I always say that a little piece of me died on stage with Juliet at the very end,” she says. “That’s why you have to try 110 per cent, because you never know if you’re going to have another opportunity to do it.”

During her time with the RWB, Green started dabbling in chocolate-making.

While recovering from her injury, she decided to pursue the interest further. She took an online course with Ecole Chocolat, a professional chocolate school headquartered in Vancouver, before moving on to workshops in Montreal and Bowen Island, B.C.

Pursuing a new creative outlet was extremely frustrating at times, Green says. She had to remind herself how many years it took for her to become a high-level dancer, always striving to improve her technique and approach.

“It’s been an interesting transition — lots of similarities with techniques and repetitive movements that you can correlate to dance,” she says. “The drive and the focus carry over.”

Eventually, Green launched Melt.

During a European trip with Nipp, Green spent time in Paris creating Enso through Or Noir, a custom service offered by the French chocolate producer Cacao Barry. She worked with a food scientist for two days to create the blend.

“I was fairly new in the chocolate business,” she says. “I was basing it on my own palate and what I want my clients to experience and enjoy.”

Green is drawn to the artistic element of being a chocolatier — playing with flavour profiles to create bonbons that taste delicious, and then using coloured cocoa butter to hand paint them so that they’re visually appealing.

It’s impressive work, says Rachel McKinley, a master chocolatier, consultant and educator with Ecole Chocolat who lives northwest of Winnipeg in Warren.

While living in Vancouver years ago, McKinley taught one of the in-person courses that Green took. She says Green has a beautiful, creative way of making chocolates.

“We eat with our eyes first,” McKinley says. “Some people will say, ‘Oh, give me that (bonbon) right now,’ and some people will say, ‘It’s too pretty to eat,’ and she has work that straddles that boundary … You eventually do (eat it) and then you figure out the flavour’s incredible.”

Indeed, Green’s slogan for Melt is: “Too pretty to eat, too delicious not to.”

She wants people from all demographics to enjoy what she makes, which is why, in spite of the rising cost of ingredients, she hasn’t changed her prices in more than five years.

Life may not have turned out the way Green once hoped it would, but she’s happy where she is today.

“Everyone thought I was crazy to start a chocolate business but I thought, why not?” she says. “You only live once, so why not dive in? And I’m glad I did.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca