Carol Schwarzkopf

Artist, Movement Educator & Wellness Coach

Carol is an accomplished coach and teaching artist with additional expertise in non profit management. She has taught dance, yoga, meditation, academics, pedagogy, and coached all ages in public and private schools as well as colleges, universities, and wellness centers. In her work as a consultant, she has designed and implemented funding programs, authored curriculum, advised, advocated, and lobbied in service to the arts, education, conservation and social justice. See Carol’s full bio below:

Carol Schwarzkopf (full bio) holds a degree from the acclaimed University of Utah where she graduated with honors, a Health & Wellness Certification from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, and is a certified yoga instructor through White Lotus Foundation in Santa Barbara, and training as a Street Yoga instructor. Additionally, she has spent years studying the brain, client motivation, fascial fitness with Tom Meyers, Pilates, resilient living, grief, qigong and the human potential movement.

Carol was raised in West Texas where she studied ballet with Ingeborg Heuser, a former soloist of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and a special pupil of the great German pedagogue and choreographer Tatjana Gsovsky. Beginning at age 13, her studies broadened with summers at San Francisco Ballet School on Ford Foundation scholarships until she left home at the age of 16 to study dance with William F Christenson and Ballet West, later dancing with Ballet El Paso, Utah”s Pioneer Theatre, Repertory Dance Theatre, and Minnesota Dance Theatre. In Utah, Carol studied with the great Danish ballerina Toni Lander and was exposed to some of the finest modern masters in America as well at what is still considered one of the finest post-secondary dance training schools in the world. She has had the good fortune of dancing in many of the major classical ballets of our time as well as in the contemporary works of some of the greatest teaching and choreographic influences of the 20^thcentury.

Carol has authored several dance curricula and taught dance at St. Olaf College , Pacific Northwest Ballet, Perpich Center for Arts Education, Normandale College, Berkshire Pulse in Massachusetts, as well as other fine dance schools nationwide. Carol co-directed the dance program for the Visual and Performing Arts Magnet at North High School in Minneapolis for 10 years where she received a Distinguished Teaching Award from her peers for her exemplary contribution to arts education. She has served as company teacher for Poetry in Motion Contemporary Dance, Ballet Director at Platinum Dance, and Ballet Principal at Creo Arts and Dance.

Honors include the Twin Cities Mayors’ Public Art Award as well as a Minneapolis Public Schools Appreciation Award. Ms Schwarzkopf sat on the advisory board that later formed The Perpich Center for Arts Education/The Arts High School, as well as the committee that successfully lobbied and attained K-12 dance licensure for the state of Minnesota. She is a founding and was a long-time board member for Minneapolis based Dance Educator’s Coalition, established to support dance artists teaching in the schools.

In fall 2025, Carol returned to the Southwest after many years in Minneapolis. She is grateful for her mentors, the work itself, and the students and colleagues who have shared her journey. contact me for privates or coffee😊!