Bio for Karen Attix

Karen Attix, a native of Oakland, California, recently moved to Nevada City from the Bay Area. She is currently a Stott Certified Mat and Reformer Instructor, Polestar Education Group Allegro Teacher, Integrated Teacher Training Program Pilates Trainer.

A professional dancer in New York and San Francisco from 1972 to 1993, Karen performed with the internationally acclaimed companies of Merce Cunningham, Margaret Jenkins and Kathryn Posin. She also toured as an Affiliate Artist throughout the United States and founded and directed her own company, Dances for 1 and 2, which toured internationally to Turkey and Israel with Virginia Matthews as guest artist and choreographer. As a choreographer, Karen received two NEA Choreography Fellowships and was commissioned to create works for Dance Omnium in Fairbanks, Alaska and Limassol Dance Group in Cyprus. During this time, she also taught modern dance at many schools in the Bay Area including Mills College, De Anza College, San Francisco Ballet School, Dancers Group and Shawl Anderson Modern Dance Center. Before she retired from teaching to become a full time arts administrator at UCSF, she also taught the Rhythm and Motion aerobic dance workout for two years. As the manager of UCSF Arts & Performances for 13 years, Karen developed many employee and student performing groups including the Parnassus Symphony, UCSF Gospel Choir and Poets on Parnassus. She served on the California Arts Council Dance Touring Panel and the Arizona Arts Commission Multi-Media Grants Panel.

Her Pilates studies began in 1997 with mat classes with Merce Sidbury, a former Jenkins dancer. After receiving her Stott and ITT certifications, Karen taught Pilates extensively in Marin and San Francisco before joining the faculty at the Bay Club, first in San Francisco then Marin, under the direction of Elizabeth Larkam, a world renowned trainer and instructor. At The Pilates Place in Grass Valley, Karen continues to explore her passion for the Gyrotonic Expansion System, especially as it relates to Pilates, the recreational sports of skiing, cycling and golf and the therapeutic needs of the client with scoliosis and osteoporosis.

Karen graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in anthropology and joined the Peace Corps with her husband, Don. They served in Venezuela for two years and developed a life long love of travel, especially to third world countries. They also love skiing, martial arts (they both have black belts in Tae Kwon Do and practice Brazilian Capoeira) and bicycling and watching their daughter, Adele, an avid snowboarder, grow into a young adult. Karen has just started to study classical piano after leaving it 47 years ago to pursue her dancing career.