40 Over 40 Bios

Heather Adamsbegan her artistic journey in Phoenix, training at South Mountain Center for the Performing Arts High School, Lydia Torea Spanish Dance, Phoenix School of Ballet, and Ballet Arizona before earning her BFA in Dance from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She continued her professional development in New York City, studying at Alvin Ailey and Paul Taylor. In 1999, she relocated to Missoula, Montana, where she became a dedicated advocate for arts education, performance, and production.

A teacher, choreographer, producer, and director, she focused those skills and founded the Downtown Dance Collective and served as its Executive Director for 13 years, cultivating emerging artists and a vibrant dance community. She currently serves on the University of Montana College of Arts and Media Advisory Council and as Montana State Captain for Americans for the Arts, championing support and advocacy for the arts nationwide. Ms. Adams is Executive Director at Arts Missoula, Missoula's Local Art Agency dedicated to Education, Advocacy and Celebration. She is a SPARK artist teaching local middle schools and has recently traveled with a delegation to Palmerston North, New Zealand, Missoula's Sister City, to strengthen our ties to our Pacific Island friends through cultural and economic exchange.

Marie Barnett was trained in the Royal Academy of Dance method of classical ballet, completing Elementary through Advanced levels and earning the Royal Academy of Dance teaching certificate. She performed classical and contemporary roles while dancing with the San Luis Obispo Civic Ballet and Golden State Ballet, both in California. Ms. Barnett served as Owner/Artistic Director of The Ballet Conservatory in Aliso Viejo, CA for eight years. Since moving to Montana in 2005, Marie has enjoyed teaching ballet, pointe, Pilates, and yoga throughout Missoula. She is currently the Artistic Director at Ballet Arts Academy and Garden City Ballet’s annual production of The Nutcracker.

Joy French’s professional stage debut was with MoTrans Dance Company, under the direction of Amy Ragsdale and Karen Kaufmann, and Joy would go on to dance in Missoula with MoTrans’ incarnation as Headwaters Dance Co. as well as The CoMotion Dance Project and other companies and collaborators throughout the Rocky Mountain West.

After earning her MFA in Performance and Choreography at the University of Colorado- Boulder, Joy returned to Missoula, MT and in 2011 founded Bare Bait Dance. Outside of BBD, some of Joy’s favorite local collaborations include working with the Montana Rep, performing with Missoula’s Dancing with the Stars, collaborating on numerous Mike Steinberg & Kelly Bouma films, and being an Open AIR Artist with Rachel Oliver Young at Traveler’s Rest (Lolo, MT). In 2017 Joy received an Artist's Innovation Award from the Montana Arts Council recognizing her devotion to her art and the state; and in 2023 received Arts Missoula’s Artist of the Year award recognizing her contributions as a thriving Missoula art-maker.

Jeanine Hedström started dancing at the age of 3 in Clinton, Iowa with summer intensives in Chicago. Jeanine holds a BA in Dance and a BS in Business Finance from the University of Iowa and is a certified Stott Pilates Teacher. Jeanine has been a dancer, teacher and choreographer in Norway, Sweden and the US. No matter where her life has taken her, she has always found a home at the dance studio. Dance is a language that everyone can understand and where she has always felt welcome. Jeanine is happy that her love of dance has been passed on to some of her 5 children and loves being a part of 40 over 40 again!

Caroline McCauley grew up dancing in small-town Oklahoma, starting ballet at four and soon adding modern, tap, jazz, and hip hop. She trained intensively, competed, and began teaching while still in high school. At 18, she moved to Los Angeles to complete the year-long professional program at Edge Performing Arts Center and went on to work in the LA dance industry as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher, performing in shows, independent films, and industrials.

In 2005, Caroline relocated to Colorado, where she continued teaching dance and exploring contact improvisation and West African dance. She attended Naropa University, earning certification in teaching yoga, then went on to study midwifery, becoming a Certified Professional Midwife in 2013.

Now living in Missoula with her husband and two children, she teaches jazz and contemporary at Studio M. 40 over 40 has allowed Caroline to joyfully return to the stage, reconnecting her with the initial love and expression of dance she fell in love with over 40 years ago.

Lori Mitchell and Patrick Marsolek have been teaching tango together for over 15 years in Missoula - sharing their joy and playfulness of the dance and working to build a welcoming, inclusive, and diverse community, where each person’s individual expression is celebrated.

Patrick has a private practice in hypnotherapy; compassionate communication, and works as a mediator for the justice court. He plays Bandoneon in a tango quartet and works with Missoula Sings, celebrating the power of song in community.

A modern dancer and retired teacher, Lori now studies drawing and painting at the UM, and helps run Life Drawing Missoula. She is thrilled to be a guest performer with BBD again for their upcoming show, An Exquisite Corpse.

Amy's dance career began in Boston and New York, performing with Impulse, Fred Benjamin, Ze'eva Cohen and Laughing Stone dance companies. Enticed by a guy out to Missoula, she became head of the UM Dance Program, returning to NYC as a guest to perform with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane and Douglas Dunn. In Missoula, she founded two contemporary dance companies, Mo-Trans, with UM colleague Karen Kaufmann, and Headwaters Dance. She was honored to be the recipient of UM's 1996 Distinguished Teaching Award and the Montana Governor's Arts Awards in 2009.

On retiring, Amy moved on to writing -- deliciously like choreography, having a memoir published in 2015 -- and working fiendishly to lobby for a publically owned community hub in McCormick Park. She's been thrilled to expand into acting through the MT Repertory Theater and to return to choreography through Westside/Bare Bait's community concerts. She's so grateful to be leading the life she is.

Rachel Oliver Young is delighted to return to her Montana roots and dive into the vibrant dance community at BBD|WT. As Development and BodyCraft Director, Rachel works mostly behind the scenes, cultivating support, building community connections, and growing youth programming. In what feels like a past life, Rachel performed as a full-time company member with West Virginia Dance Company, touring the Mid-Atlantic for three years, and has also worked as a freelance dancer in theaters, festivals, site-specific works, and multimedia projects in CA, CO, WV, and NY. Her choreography has appeared everywhere from women’s prisons and outdoor landscapes to experimental multimedia spaces and traditional theaters. Her work has been commissioned by Bare Bait Dance Company (in 2014!), Davis Contemporary Dance Company, and West Virginia Dance Company, and presented at WestFest Dance (NY), Performática (México), the National High School Dance Festival Gala, West Virginia Wesleyan University, West Virginia Dance Festival, Philly Live Arts & Fringe, Dixon Place, Triskelion Arts, and the University of Montana. Rachel teaches as an adjunct at UM, Studio M, and BBD’s Company Contemporary Ballet, and holds an MFA from the University of Colorado Boulder. She is deeply grateful that dance continues to guide her path here in Missoula.

Holly Rollins truly did run away and join the circus. Over her career, she has performed throughout Europe and North America as an aerialist with Cirque du Soleil in Quidam and La Nouba, and represented Cirque du Soleil at the International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo.

Her career highlights include choreographer for the Commonwealth Games; creator and director of Veritas, a contemporary circus show; acrobatic dancer in Folies Bergère in Las Vegas; guest performer in Teatro Zinzanni Cabaret, and flying trapeze artist at Club Med resorts in the Bahamas and Mexico.

Holly served as faculty at the National Institute of Circus Arts at Swinburne University in Australia and later returned as a guest director. She holds a Master of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She continues to challenge cultural assumptions about aging and is the proud mother of Neve and Mila Corrick.

Colleen Rosbarsky is a dance teacher, choreographer, performer, and esthetician. She has a B.F.A. in Ballet from the University of Utah. Recent choreography credits include: Anything Goes for the University of Montana Department of Theater and Dance, Zootown Cabaret’s In Pieces, and Cinderella at Fort Peck Summer Theatre. She’s grateful for this opportunity to celebrate life after 40 through dance with our community.

Nicole Wolcott is an artist and teacher who made a career in dance in NYC for twenty years until the pandemic brought her back home to Montana in 2021. She returns to the city each year to work with her longtime collaborator Larry Keigwin. In the fall of 2026 they will perform their duet and extended community work 'Stage Door' at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan. The throughline of her independent compositions of the last decade is the artistic collaboration with sound designer, philosopher and friend Omar Zubair. Rooted in improvisation, they create hyper-live dance theater performances with whimsy and aplomb. Wolcott has been in show business for over thirty years. This fact astounds her. She danced in the rural and the chic; she was a diplomat for U.S. State Dept. through DANCE USA; and a teacher for many: 2-4 years to graduate students. She has helped create dances for Broadway, Off Broadway, a major motion picture, an international art rock band, for performances at The Guggenheim, The Kennedy Center, The American Dance Festival, and CBGB’s. She has been in the ensemble and she has been the star. She loves dance.