Karen McShane-Hellenbrand: BS Dance Education, MFA, Teaching Faculty IV at the UW –Madison Dance Department teaches: Modern/Contemporary, Ballet, Dance for PE Majors, Pedagogy, Teaching Dance, Ballroom, Zena Rommett Floor-Barre Technique ®.

Karen is a performer, choreographer, teacher, artist – in -residence. Karen’s choreography often reflects her societal observations and concerns. Most recently, Triumph is in the Persistence (2023): looks at how trauma lives in the body and is housed as sensation and perception. The trauma creates a dissonance with the world around one. When Time Ran Out (2018): based on two of the most prevalent themes found in contemporary science-fiction: humanity’s enslavement to time and the possibility of nuclear annihilation. RED STAINS (2016): a collage expressing shared female experiences across cultures, reflecting women’s heroic past and coming face to face with the power dynamics of the present. Karen also has choreographed for the Madison Bach Musicians and enjoys collaborating with these talented musicians.

Karen is passionate about Dance Education for everyone. She received the Robert and Caroll Heideman Award for Excellence in Public Service and Outreach, 2015. She has developed a residency design that includes the entire school where often 400- 500 students create their own dances. The residencies culminate in an all-inclusive model where all students perform together; the public performances are extraordinary to witness. She regularly conducts professional development for continuing /teacher education programs on using movement as a tool to teach across the curriculum (Arts Integration Methods), teaching educators to use movement and a creative methodology in the classroom. In 2016, she presented at the Midwest Arts Integration Conference, Dancing Under a Water Umbrella: An Arts Integration Curriculum Model & for The Kennedy Center Partners in Education, 2014, Arts Integration in the Classroom/Reaching New Horizons. She led a workshop for teachers in Janesville, WI titled Unravel the Mystery of Flight through the Kennedy Center Partners in Education and UW-Whitewater Young Auditorium.

Her goals are to promote access to dance education and to embody professionalism; she works to keep dance from being an elitist art form. Karen is WI’s 2024 statewide coordinator for the National Water Dance Project and serves on the NWD advisory board. She developed an arts integration curriculum for NWD, available to educators for project implementation using water as an umbrella theme! Karen received an invitation to serve as a member of the State Academic Standards Writing Committee for Dance. Former State Superintendent, Governor Tony Evers established this committee to revise the Wisconsin Academic Standards for Dance. It was an honor for Karen to serve on this committee.