Marissa Powell

Marissa Powell is a Senior Dance Major on the Custom Design Track with a concentration in choreography, and a minor in Somatics. Originally from Meadville, Pennsylvania, Marissa began dancing when she was just three years old, and found her love for making dances throughout her childhood. Marissa was a competitive dancer for eleven years at her home dance studio, Allegro Dance Arts, and was also a part of the Oil Region Ballet Company for seven years. At age sixteen, Marissa began teaching contemporary and hip-hop dance classes at her home studio, finding both herself, and her dream, to become a professional choreographer and dance educator in her adult life. In her time at Drexel, Marissa has set three works on the Drexel Dance Ensemble, presented adjudicated work at the American College Dance Festival (2026) at Seton Hill University, studied abroad at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London, England, completed a six-month internship at Brickhouse NYC, and is currently earning her 450-hour Pilates Training Certification from the Drexel Pilates Training Program. Her lively and diverse experiences have brought Marissa to look at the dance industry from many different angles, and through several different lenses. 

Marissa’s Senior Project, “Concert and Commercial Dance:What’s the Work?”, presented as a documentary-styled film, is her contribution to the conversation of how we are providing dancers with stable and meaningful work today, and what the integrity of that work is. Marissa is using first-hand experiences from both professional concert and commercial dancers to compare their work experiences by making connections between the two settings. Through this research, Marissa hopes to provide aspiring dancers of all ages with insight on what kind of opportunities and real work expectations await them in both concert and commercial dance. She will also share how her choreography and processes live in both realms within the dance industry with inclusion of some of her work within the film. 

This work will be presented on May 16th, at 6:30 pm in the Urban Annex Screening Room at Drexel University. Marissa will be presenting her research alongside her peers, Georgia Parsons and Molly Reilly.