Randy Tinker Smith

Randy Tinker Smith is a ballet producer, director, and arts administrator who created *Wahzhazhe: An Osage Ballet*, a landmark work about Osage history and displacement. An Osage Nation citizen with Osage and Cherokee descent, Smith's path to ballet production drew from her background as a musician, interior design studies, family business experience, and theatrical work. While employed at the Osage Nation Museum around 2000, she encountered composer Lou Brock's music cycle *The Journey* and proposed adapting it into a ballet narrative.

Smith spent approximately a year developing a one-hour storyline spanning pre-contact Osage life, removal from Missouri through Kansas to Oklahoma, boarding schools, oil wealth, violence, and contemporary continuity. Her process was rooted in community accountability: she interviewed roughly fifty Osage elders repeatedly, determining what could be staged and what should remain private. Her daughter Jenna Smith choreographed the ballet; Lou Brock and Joseph Rivers created and arranged music; Roman Jasinski advised; and Wendy Ponca, Terry Wann, Alexandra Ponca Stock, dancers, and other artists contributed costumes, scenery, and performance. The result was a coordinated community production rather than a single author's claim on Osage history.

*Wahzhazhe: An Osage Ballet* began performing in 2012 and was presented and recorded by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian on March 23, 2013. A scene from the ballet was later performed at the 2015 Festival of Families during Pope Francis's Philadelphia visit. Smith chose ballet as a form partly because of the legacy of Maria and Marjorie Tallchief, while insisting that Osage people control representation of their own history.

Smith built lasting institutions around the ballet's success. Dance Maker Performing Arts Academy opened in Pawhuska in 2014, and Art Maker was established in 2015 as an umbrella organization for arts education, culture, and community programs. More than half of Dance Maker students have participated on scholarships. The academy has sustained annual performances of *Wahzhazhe*, a spring showcase, and *The Nutcracker*, creating ongoing opportunities for Osage youth beyond touring productions. By 2022, *Wahzhazhe* marked ten years in performance after pandemic disruption. In 2024, Art Maker received support through the National Endowment for the Arts' ArtsHERE initiative to strengthen planning, school engagement, teaching capacity, and audience development.