Marissa Brown is a biracial, Black and Portuguese, multidisciplinary artist. She has dedicated much of her life to the language and movement of the body. For her it was where she first found her voice and expression. Today she creates and shares the melding of emotionality and movement into intimate moments of expression. Live performance, film, installation, photography, publication, movement direction, and teaching are all avenues in which her work takes shape. Told by an intuitive healer that she is not an artist living on the surface but an artist of depth, she often identifies with this word and allows it to inform her work.
Marissa studied performance and choreography at the University of California Irvine before beginning her professional dance career in San Francisco. From there she moved to New York, where she performed and built her own work for many years while dancing for places like Phantom Limb Company and The Park Avenue Armory. She moved to Los Angeles to pursue her masters in choreography on a full scholarship at California Institute of the Arts and returned to New York in between her first and second year to perform for Broadway’s West Side Story. After completing her MFA during the pandemic, she received a contract to dance for Benjamin Millipied’s company LA Dance Project. Upon leaving the company, she received commissions to create work for CalArts Spring Concert and ODC’s State of Play Festival and began working freelance internationally with inspiring choreographers like Dimitri Chamblas and Alexis Blake. As well as dancing for commercial, music video and film work.
Marissa has had the pleasure of being an artist in residence with Art Share LA, LA Dance Project, White Leaves Residency in New Mexico, Keshet Dance and Center for the Arts Residency in New Mexico, and Gallim x CreateArt Residency in New York. Her dance works and films have been showcased in festivals, theaters, and unconventional spaces around the world including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and most recently in Paris at Chaillot National Theater.
Today, Marissa continues to feel called to be a performer alongside being a creator as a way for her to transmute the depths of her emotional energy into an offering of connection, with the hopes that others will tap into their own feelings and embodiment when engaging.
As a multi-passionate individual (Manifesting Generator in Human Design), Marissa is passionate and skilled in other creative endeavors such as collaborating with fashion brands, particularly conscious and sustainable brands. She has been commissioned to create for brand American Apparel and often collaborates with Los Angeles based brand KkCo.
A lover of plant medicine and food, Marissa creates many of her own healing herbal creations and elixirs. She also has strong practices in Kundalini, yoga, meditation, manifestation, plays the harmonium, and loves working with spirit animals.
To connect with Marissa email lonekingprojects@gmail.com or follow on Instagram @marissajbrown
