Karin Jensen has always danced.

From the time she was a little girl in Piedmont, through her years at UC Berkeley, where she earned a degree in Political Economy of Natural Resources, and during her studies at the University of San Francisco where she earned a masters in Environmental Management, she danced. As an adult, when she was not at work creating contingency plans for disasters such as hazardous materials spills and earthquakes, Jensen danced.

She began with ballet lessons at the Oakland Civic Ballet then progressed to the Oakland Ballet. Later, she took classes at the Alameda School of Dance with Mora Stone, who has taught generations of dancers in Alameda.

At 45, Jensen says she feels the physical strains of dancing but is not ready to stop yet. She still performs with local dance companies such as the Alameda Civic Ballet, Omega West Dance Company in Berkeley, Alameda Vintage Dancers, and the Knotts Dance Company in the South Bay.

In recent years, Jensen has also branched out. She choreographs and performs dances at her church, the First Congregational Church of Alameda. She says the work at the church intrigues her. "There's so much art that is inspired by faith that's really beautiful — music and painting and sculpture," she said. "Why not dance?"

Not surprisingly, Jensen met her now-husband, Sven Jensen, on the dance floor at a ballroom dance benefit at Kofman Auditorium. After the benefit, the two went on a ballroom dancing tour of Europe. "We got to take ballroom dancing classes in Paris, Prague and Vienna," said Jensen, smiling at the memory. "In the evening there would be these wonderful ballroom parties that we would attend in costume. How could you not fall in love in a situation like that? It was very romantic."

After getting married in 2002, the Jensens settled in a Victorian fixer-upper near Edison Elementary School, and had two daughters, now five and seven.

It was not all smooth sailing. Jensen recalls, "I was unhappy with my stressful career and long commute. I didn't feel that I was the kind of mother that I wanted to be. In fact, I felt like I was doing everything in a half-baked, put-out-the-fire manner and not achieving excellence in any area of my life."

After talking it through with her husband and figuring out how they could reduce their expenses and live on one salary, Jensen quit her job.

Since then, Jensen has taught dance part-time at the Alameda Ballet Academy.

What classes do you teach at ABA? I teach Mommy and Me Ballet (for three-year olds), pre-ballet (for four-year olds), and beginning ballet.

What is pre-ballet? It's like a preschool version of ballet. It's a lot about learning the format of a ballet class. We do a stretch. We do a very short time at the barre. When you're older and you're at the barre it's a meditative experience of learning to do one step very carefully. But for little kids, they're thinking 'we're going slow, I'm bored, let's go on!'

What do you like about teaching? I had never taught young children before. The first few classes I was so nervous you would have thought I was performing at Carnegie Hall instead of standing in front of a dozen preschoolers. I was terrified to be in charge of so many children even for an hour. But, over time, something wonderful happened. I began to experience the joy of sharing something I dearly loved with children who are at that wonderful age where dancing and movement are magical and free-spirited. They have no self-consciousness.

The other benefit that I didn't expect was a certain level of prestige. I have little children beaming up at me as they enter the classroom and cheerfully saying "Good morning, Ms. Karin!"  They will also call out to me on the streets or in stores like Toy Safari when I happen to run into them. And mothers will introduce me like a celebrity to their daughters. I never got this kind of treatment at my office job!

You ended up doing something very different in your earlier career. Did you have dreams of becoming a professional dancer when you were a young girl? I really didn't seriously. It was definitely not something my mother encouraged. My mother is Chinese. 

What generation? She was born in San Francisco but when she was eleven, she lost her mother. And then her father went back to China to get a new wife because that's what you did back then. There were a lot of Chinese men here, but not a lot of women. Plus, he had six kids so it was kind of hard to date!

My mother came back to the United States when she was 16. She never got to finish high school and worked so hard all her life as a waitress. So her dream was for me to go to college and not have the hard life she did. I felt an obligation to pursue practical employment. So the idea of being a dancer was not in the cards.

Any regrets? If I had to do it over again, I think I would have enjoyed something small like dancing for a summer at Disneyland — something that wouldn't derail a career. I feel blessed that in the second half of my life, I am getting to pursue work that is simply joyful.

What do you do for fun on the weekends?  Our favorite park is Lincoln Park with its big oak trees. We have dinner at home, rent a video and snuggle up together with a bowl of popcorn. My husband and I still like to go dancing — but not every weekend now that we have kids. There's the Friday Night Waltz in Oakland, Argentine tango, and we'll be dancing in the Nutcracker as parents in the party scene. Recently, we passed a lovely afternoon doing waltzes and polkas in perfect weather in the Biergarten at Speisekammer while the kids were happily engaged in the bouncy house play area. I love how family-friendly Alameda businesses are.