Karen Hardy competed as a professional Latin American dancer, and is a former World Masters, United Kingdom Open, and Strictly Come Dancing Champion. Karen was awarded the Carl Alan award for services to the dance world in 1995. Karen was named Teacher of the Year in 2002 & 2003 at the Crystal Palace Dance Championships and to date devotes her time to successfully producing new young and inspiring champions in her coaching worldwide.

In 2005 Karen was asked to be a part of Strictly Come Dancing. She took BBC Newsreader Bill Turnbull seven weeks through the show and in the Christmas show trained former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Evander Holyfield. The following year Karen showed her true talents and pure love of dance as together with her celebrity partner, cricketer Mark Ramprakash, they took the nation by storm as they took the title of Strictly Come Dancing Champions Series 4.

2007 Karen Hardy and Erin Boag released the first ever Strictly Come Dancersize fitness DVD. This DVD made it to the number one slot in the fitness market and has over 200,000 copies to date.

At the start of 2009, Karen realised her ultimate dream and opened her own luxurious new dance studios in London with her husband Conrad Murray. The members-only studios are based at the glamorous Imperial Wharf development in Chelsea and offer private and group tuition in all dance disciplines, as well as gift experiences, wedding packages and children’s lessons. 

Karen devised and choreographed a huge dance event in Blackpool for BBC Learning that featured on Strictly Come Dancing as well as teaching Justin Lee Collins to dance for his Sky documentary, Justin Lee Collins: Ballroom Dancer. After stepping down as a dancer for the 2009 series of Strictly Come Dancing, Karen has remained on our television screens as the Choreography Corner expert on the BBC’s companion show It Takes Two, as the Strictly Come Dancing expert on BBC Breakfast and also as a specialist choreographer in BBC1’s latest dance spectacular, So You Think You Can Dance.

For the early part of 2010 Karen’s efforts have been concentrated on building upon the huge success of her studio and working alongside Warner Leisure on the creative direction and choreography for their sell out Strictly Come Dancing breaks, where Karen also appeared as a dancer for the final time.