Nicole Marquez

Nicole Marquez was destined to dance her way into people’s hearts. From the age of three, Nicole was in dance classes. When she was ten years old, she was cast in a children’s show produced by Mississippi Educational Television called Funnybones. Throughout high school, Nicole worked in television and radio. She had a weekly radio program called "Nic’s Picks: What’s Hot and What’s Not." When she was a junior in high school, she was hired by the NBC affiliate in Jackson, Mississippi to do a weekly teen report for the evening news. She has been a dancer in a national Coca-Cola commercial, hosting a documentary series on teen smoking, being crowned the "Reina Latina" at the Mississippi Hispanic Festival and she was featured in an article for Teen People magazine. Nicole went to college at the University of Southern Mississippi, where she majored in theatre and minored in dance. During college, she spent a semester abroad, studying in Pontlevoy, France and traveling around Europe. While in college, Nicole was an intern for the American Dance Festival at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. After her apprenticeships, Nicole returned home to Mississippi where she worked as a production assistant on two national children’s shows. She assisted with "Between the Lions," produced by Mississippi Public Broadcasting, and with "Lomax: The Hound of Music," produced by EyeVox Productions. She was also the assistant director for "You Gotta Move," a video dance series used in elementary schools, produced by 4-Tell Films. In January 2008, Nicole felt it was time to make the big move to New York. She moved to Harlem with three actor friends from Louisville and began auditioning. She enrolled in regular dance classes and took a Pilates course. She got her mat certification in Pilates and got a job as a personal trainer at the Cornell Fitness Center. In 2008, Nicole fell six stories sustaining a broken neck, back, pelvis, ribs and a punctured lung. After two surgeries, two months in the hospital, and three months in rehab, Nicole was walking again! Today she is dancing again, but in a different way. She does choreography for college students and works with children. Nicole volunteers at the Blair Batson Children’s Hospital in Jackson and has a full and rich life. Her message of perseverance, determination and hope is one she loves to share every chance she gets.