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Dancer In April of 2000, the Oakland Ballet in California named Augusta native Karen Brown as the company's new artistic director. Miss Brown, shown dancing above with Keith Saunders, was born in 1955 in Augusta and grew up in the city, graduating from Aquinas High School. She became one of the first black students to dance for the Augusta Ballet and began her ballet training with the company's artistic director, Ron Colton. She was dancing with the Augusta Ballet in Richmond, Va., when Karen Shook, co-director of the Dance Theater of Harlem in New York City spotted her and offered her a scholarship. Soon she was the world-famous dance' company's principal dancer. She was with the Dance Theatre of Harlem from 1973 to 1995. She subsequently served as director of education at the Atlanta Ballet Center for Dance Education, worked for the International Association of Blacks in Dance and served as Artistic Director of Karenina, a dance support organization she founded in 1997. |
