Kristin Marrs is a choreographer, performer, and teacher. As an Associate Professor of Instruction, she teaches Majors Ballet, Pointe, Alexander Technique, Functional Anatomy, Dance Kinesiology, and Teaching Dance In Higher Education.

Marrs’s choreography explores the evolution of ballet technique and narrative form, and she has presented her work at concert and site-specific venues around the United States. Works include choreography for the premiere of Karkinos (2022), an opera by composer Jacob Bancks created in collaboration with the Quad City Symphony Orchestra and the Living Proof Exhibit, an organization that provides arts experiences for cancer survivors, and Intersecting Lines (2022), a dance film created with oboist Courtney Miller and dance artist/filmmaker Alex Bush.

Marrs is a certified Alexander Technique teacher with the American Society for the Alexander Technique and a Functional Awareness® Movement Educator. She runs a private studio in addition to teaching Alexander Technique to students throughout the Division of Performing Arts. She is a founding member of Alexander Technique Iowa (www.alexandertechniqueiowa.com), an online community of AmSAT teachers and students in the Hawkeye State. Marrs' research and teaching interests include the integration of healthy somatic practices with ballet pedagogy, and she has presented her research at CORPS de Ballet International and the Dance Studies Association. She has published in the Journal of Undergraduate Teaching and Learning Practice and Dance Chronicle

Marrs trained at SUNY Purchase and London Studio Centre, and holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Iowa. She previously taught ballet technique at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, Columbus Dance Theatre Intensive Training Program, University of Iowa Youth Ballet, and as a guest artist at Ohio Wesleyan University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Shenyang Conservatory of Music (China). Marrs performed as a company member of Columbus Dance Theatre, Ballet Quad Cities, Northern Ballet Theatre, Arova Contemporary Ballet, Paradise Ballet Theatre, Opera Columbus, and Images of Dance (London). Her performance repertoire includes works by George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton, Marius Petipa, Lynn Andrews, Penny Askew, Deanna Carter, Margaret Mead-Finizio, Kennet Oberly, Stella Kane, Maria Glimcher, Johanne Jakhelln, Alun Jones, Kim Robards, Bettijane Sills, and Tim Veach. Some of her favorite roles include the Milkmaid in Ashton’s Façade, the Snowy Egret Queen in Jones’ Nutcracker Key West, and dancing as a soloist in Oberly’s Goldberg Variations. In Summer 2024, she and theatre artist Anne-Marie Nest will be in residency at the UI Obermann Center, preparing their collaborative performance Chalk.

Research interests

• Choreography
• Alexander technique
• Progressive ballet pedagogy