Artistic Director
Molly Koon Quist

Having grown up as a soloist for the Oak Ridge Civic Ballet, Mrs. Quist has served as ORCBA's Artistic Director for more than 20 seasons. She studied under many talented teachers and directors, including Anna Marie Holmes, David Holmes, Suzanne Skeel, Steve McBride, Leslie Swazee, Cristian Addams, Jill Hollingsworth, Bruce Alan Ewing, Bill Martin-Viscount, and Southwest Ballet Center. Mrs. Quist holds a B.A. from the University of South Alabama (where she attended on scholarship), and a M.S. from the University of Tennessee. She was a dancer on the University of South Alabama Dance Team. Mrs. Quist is the owner and director of The Dance Centre of Oak Ridge. Her dancers have received many awards over the years in both regional and national competitions. Mrs. Quist resides in Knoxville with her husband, Knoxville attorney Brian Quist. They have three children (Katrina, Andy, and Alex). 

Assistant Artistic Director 
​Katrina Rouse

Katrina has been the Assistant Artistic Director since 2019. Most recently, she directed an original one-act production of The Little Mermaid for ORCBA's 59th Season that was featured in Fairy Tale to Fairy Tale. For ORCBA's 58th Season, she restaged a two-act production of The Sleeping Beauty that focused on capturing choreography from the original 1890 production by Marius Petipa. During ORCBA's 57th Season, she staged the original productions: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland performed at the Knoxville Civic Auditorium, and a one-act ballet based on the story of The Snowman by Raymond Briggs. She has been a member of ORCBA since 1997 when she made her Nutcracker debut as the Petite Mirliton dancing alongside her mother in the "Dance of the Mirlitons." She went on to dance the solo roles of Clara, Spanish Soloist, Dew Drop Fairy, and Arabian Princess in The Nutcracker, Bluebird in The Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella in Cinderella, Myrta in Giselle, and Big Swan in Swan Lake. She had the opportunity to dance as a Party Girl with the former Knoxville City Ballet's production of The Nutcracker. She was accepted by The South Carolina Summer Dance Conservatory at the University of South Carolina to attend their three-week ballet intensive at the age of fourteen. Katrina has studied primarily under the direction of Molly Quist, Sharon Cousins, and Buff Edmonds. She competed at the regional and national levels with The Dance Centre of Knoxville for over a decade. She was a member of the Farragut High School Varsity Dance Team notably placed 6th in the large jazz category at the UDA National Dance Team Championship in Orlando, FL which qualified them to be aired on ESPN. She was awarded Knoxville's Junior Miss 2008 and went on to win the physical fitness and talent categories at the Tennessee Junior Miss Pageant.  Katrina received a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Tennessee Wesleyan College in 2012 and a Master of Science in Nursing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2018. She is a board-certified family nurse practitioner.​

Assistant to the Directors
Courtney Lynne Wills

Picture
After studying Classical Ballet at Point Park University's Conservatory of Performing Arts, Courtney has returned to teach and choreograph.  She began dancing with ORCBA in 2007 performing lead roles in Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Into the Woods, & Firebird.  She has performed lead roles with  GO! Contemporary Dance Works in The Barbarosa, Persephone, Alice, Unsung Heroes, and Runaway, among others. She’s trained under Lisa Hall McKee, Laura Shields, Denise Njuguna, Keisha Lalama, Svetlana Novodran, Girard Holt, Peter LeBreton Merz, Cynthia Ridler, Parker Esse, Christopher Mohnani, Greg & Laurie Merriman, among others; & attended various dance intensives, including TN Governor's School for the Arts.  As a classically trained soprano & advocate for the arts in her community, she’s performed with the Oak Ridge Playhouse in Hairspray, The Music Man, & 1776; and you can occasionally hear her sing the National Anthem at UT sporting events. Courtney received her BS in Marketing from the University of Tennessee and is currently employed as the Marketing Coordinator for Lewis Group Architects in Knoxville.  In her spare time, she continues to teach ballet at A Dancer's Place in Knoxville and The Dance Centre of Oak Ridge, as well as doing freelance social media design and content creation for local businesses.
REHEARSAL ASSISTANT
Jenny Collins Flatford
Jenny Collins Flatford, rehearsal assistant and soloist with ORCBA, has been dancing for 31 years and studied under the direction of Molly Quist, Sharon Cousins, Julia Moisseeva, Stacy Calvert, and Buff Edmonds, among many others. Jenny was an active participant in The Dance Centre competition team for many years and an annual participant in the former Knoxville City Ballet's production of The Nutcracker. Over the years, she participated in several 3-week summer workshops, which included the Roanoke Ballet Theatre Summer Intensive in Roanoke, Virginia; Tulsa Ballet Theatre Summer Intensive in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and the University of South Carolina Summer Intensive in Columbia, South Carolina.
Jenny has been an active member of ORCBA for 30 years. She has danced the roles of Clara, Spanish Soloist, Arabian Princess, Dew Drop Fairy, and the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker; Bluebird and Aurora in Sleeping Beauty; Cinderella in Cinderella; and both the Black Swan and White Swan in Swan Lake. Some of Jenny’s favorite variations include the Ribbon Dance from La Fille Mal Gardée, Kitri's 3rd act variation from Don Quixote, and Ramonda's 3rd act variation from Ramonda. Jenny received her Bachelor of Arts in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Tennessee in 2011 and currently works as the Administrative Coordinator to the Vice Provost at the University of Tennessee's Division of Student Success. She and her husband, Daniel, welcomed their daughter, Remington Rose, into the world in February 2018.

​

​