“I’ve been dancing since I was three years old, and Penn Dance was a natural fit for me.”
Allison Dawn Powell, C’93, has a lifelong love of dance that only grew during her time at Penn. After taking dance classes her freshman year at Penn, she auditioned for Penn Dance and was accepted. By the time she was a senior, she was Co-Chair and choreographing for the company. “Some of my fondest memories at Penn occurred in what is now the Annenberg Center Dance Studio,” she says.
As an alumna, she wanted to make sure that Penn students had more opportunities to explore their love of dance, and she and her husband, Thomas Scott Vandever, C’92, made a Benjamin Franklin Society-level gift that would provide the support necessary to renovate the Annenberg Dance Studio for use by Penn performing groups. Their continued annual giving provides the Annenberg Center with the resources to maintain this space for student use, year after year. Thanks to the generous support of Allison and Thomas, Penn students now have the opportunity to take part in the Powell-Vandever Master Dance Class series, where they can study with some of the best dancers and choreographers in the world.
Allison’s engagement doesn’t end there. In addition to her role as an Overseer for the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, she is Co-Chair of the Penn Performing Arts Regional Council (PennPARC) of New York. In this role, she has helped build a council of thirteen volunteer alumni that has sponsored a diverse array of performing arts events in New York, “all with a distinctive Penn flair,” she notes. With Penn PARC firmly established in New York, they recently launched another Penn Performing Arts Regional Council in Los Angeles.
Allison still finds time to come home to Penn’s campus to enjoy the Annenberg Center’s diverse programming. “What makes the Annenberg Center a special place,” she says, “is that it’s a stage for the most cutting-edge performers in the world, and at the same time a venue for Penn students to perform and learn from the best.”
Learn more about BFS giving to some of our Schools & Centers:
THE PENN FUND
Penn Medicine
The Fund for Penn Law
Penn Dental Medicine
Perelman School of Medicine
Loren Eiseley Society at the Penn Museum
The Wharton Fund
