GUEST TUTORS

Kathleen-Malee Smith

Born in London, Miko has received worldwide recognition for her dancing.  She was awarded the Gold Medal at the Moscow International Ballet Competition in 2013.  At Varna International Ballet Competition in Bulgaria, she won Silver Medal in 2014 and Bronze Medal in 2012.  At the Prix de Lausanne in Switzerland, she was recognized as the best Swiss dancer in 2013.  In the US, she won Bronze at the New York finals of the Youth America Grand Prix in 2010 and Gold Medals at the World Ballet Competition in 2009 and 2011.
Miko has trained classical ballet with Tatiana Pali, Alyona Yakovleva-Randall, Alexei Moskalenko, and Sergey Sergiev at the Indiana Ballet Conservatory.  Between 2008-2010, Miko returned to London three times to train at the Royal Ballet School’s International Summer Program where she danced solo roles in the final performance and received the Commendation Award each year.  She has also attended summer intensives on scholarship at San Francisco Ballet School, American Ballet Theater, Kirov Academy of Ballet, and Rock School.  In 2015, Miko joined the Birmingham Royal Ballet.
Miko has been invited to perform soloist repertoires in galas such as “YAGP Stars of Today meet Stars of Tomorrow Gala”, “Lausanne Gala” in Japan, “Evening with the Stars” with Indianapolis City Ballet, “Aberdeen International Youth Festival” in Scotland, “An Evening of Stars” with National Ballet of Denver, “International Ballet Festival” in Miami, and many others.   She has also been invited back to perform the role of Sugar Plum Fairy for the Chula Vista Ballet for three consecutive years. 
Miko was one of 6 dancers featured in the award winning ballet documentary "First Position".  
Miko is active on social media with over 290,000 followers on Instagram and 20 million views on Youtube and was listed as one of “The Most Influential People of 2011” in the Dance Spirit Magazine. She started teaching in 2016 and has held workshops in Thailand, Japan, and Australia.
Afterwards, Miko decided to change directions and pursue science.  She is currently an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley majoring in Integrative Biology and researching therapies for malignant brain tumors in the Brain Tumor Center at UCSF.