Kristin Marrs, MFA, M.AmSAT, is a choreographer, performer, and an Associate Professor of Instruction at the University of Iowa Department of Dance. Her research and teaching interests include the integration of somatic practices with ballet pedagogy. She has presented her research at CORPS, Dance Studies Association, and National Dance Education Organization, and published in the Journal of Undergraduate Teaching and Learning Practice and Dance Chronicle. Marrs is a certified Alexander Technique teacher with the American Society for the Alexander Technique and a Functional Awareness® Movement Educator. She is a founding member of Alexander Technique Iowa (alexandertechniqueiowa.com), an online community of Alexander teachers and students in the Hawkeye State.

Marrs’s choreography explores the evolution of ballet as a technique, narrative form, and performance practice. She has collaborated with artists in diverse media, including paper and fiber artist Mary Merkel-Hess, composer Jacob Bancks, and filmmaker Alex Bush. In 2024, she is co-creating Chalk, an interdisciplinary dance-theater performance with Anne Marie Nest, and Qualia, an in-the-round excavation of ballet technique with violinist Sabrina Tabby and Atyls String Quartet.

Marrs trained at SUNY Purchase and London Studio Centre and holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Iowa. Prior to finding her home as a liberal arts educator, 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).