The Rock School

Matthew Powell

Matthew Powell was a wonderful addition to The Rock School’s guest faculty for the summer intensive program. He was attentive to all of our students and a pleasure to have at Rock Center in and out of the studio.

At the age of sixteen, Matthew Powell relocated from Shepherdstown, West Virginia to New York City to train on scholarship at the School of American Ballet, the official school of the New York City Ballet.

After two years of training at SAB, Matthew headed west to dance with the Pacific Northwest Ballet. While dancing with PNB, he performed soloist roles and toured worldwide. In 2001, Matthew joined the Kansas City Ballet, where he danced soloist and principal roles in both classical and contemporary ballets. In addition to dancing, Matthew was a faculty member with the Kansas City Ballet School. He has also taught classes and choreographed ballets for numerous renowned universities, companies, and schools. As a guest artist, he has performed as a solo dancer with the San Francisco Opera with the Metropolitan Ballet of Minneapolis, and with many other companies and schools across the country. In 2006, he was awarded one of five fellowship grants given nationwide from the NewYork Choreographic Institute for the creation of a new work, titled “Resonant Dances.”

In the Summer of 2008, Matthew conceived and directed the Crossroads Ballet Festival a celebration of classical ballet.The festival combined the talents of dancers from nine ballet companies across the globe and played to sold-out houses over the course of two nights in Kansas City. Most recently, Matthew has been cast in the international tour of the classic Arthur Laurents-Stephen Sondheim-Leonard Bernstein musical West Side Story.