Karen Smith is the Programs Coordinator and an Instructor with Montana Ballet Company. She began with MBC upon its inception under Ann Bates in 1983 and has been back with the Company since 2012. She has studied on scholarship around the country, including with the Pacific Northwest Ballet School, The Joffrey Ballet, and the Milwaukee Ballet School, and with teachers including Joy and Conrad Ludlow, Georges Golovine, and Lynda Yourth among others. Karen has a special history with MBC, having grown up with our organization and performing in MBC’s very first Nutcracker production. During that time, she managed the Montana Ballet School, danced with the Company, and served as assistant choreographer and rehearsal assistant for the Company’s productions. Karen has experience teaching students of all ages and abilities, including with MBC, the Ballet Academy of Texas in Coppell, TX, and as a Dancing Classrooms Teaching Artist in Residence in Dallas/Fort Worth Elementary Schools. She was formally trained in Adaptive Dance at the Boston Ballet and is head instructor for MBC’s Adaptive Dance Program. Karen is a licensed Progressing Ballet Technique teacher with a B.A. in English from Montana State University. After exploring, living, working, and dancing around the world, Karen is happily back in Bozeman with her husband of 29 years, two kids, two cats, a hedgehog, and a pug named Percy.