Meet your Dance Education Specialist

About Ann Biddle

Ann Biddle M.A., Dance Education, Columbia University, B.A., English, Kenyon College, and Fulbright Scholar. Ms. Biddle has been a dance educator, staff developer, curriculum consultant, writer, and choreographer for the past 35 years. She is the Director of the DEL Institute for Professional Learning and Advancement and Director of DEL at Jacob’s Pillow. Ms. Biddle has worked with numerous dance companies including Dorrance Dance, Flamenco Vivo, Jose Limon, Ballet Hispanico, Urban Bush Women, HT Chen, Dorrance Dance and Jonah Bokaer. She has been a facilitator for the NYC DOE Dance Blueprint since 2005. Ms. Biddle worked at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School (PVPA) in MA from 2010 – 2018 as the Leader of the Dance Department, Director of Arts Programs and Director of DEL PVPA. Ms. Biddle has been a dance Lecturer at UMASS/Amherst, Kenyon College, Skidmore, Ball State University and Mt. Holyoke College. Ms. Biddle’s published dance curricula include: New York Export: Opus Jazz, Jerome Robbins: The Essence of Cool, Doug Varone and Brenda Angiel’s Aerial collaboration, Dances for iPhone film series, Wonderdance, Dance Making & Langston Hughes Poetry, The Essence of Pearl Primus, Reimagining D-Man in the Water, Into Sunlight A Teacher’s Guide, and was a curriculum consultant on The Perspectives on the Green Table curriculum (PTDC/DEL). Ms. Biddle has been the Project Director of the DEL Tracing Footsteps: Honoring Diverse Voices in NYC Dance History curriculum project since 2020.

Ms. Biddle is currently a doctoral candidate in the Dance Education EdD program at Teachers College and is a recipient of the Susan Furhman and Arnhold Foundation scholarships. Her research interests include teacher education and preparation in K-12, transformative adult learning and leadership, educational mentoring and coaching, and dance and social justice.

Positionality Statement

My educational creed is anchored in the lineage of the American progressive education movement as I care deeply about providing equal access to a learner-centered, social constructivist, culturally sustaining, and transformative model of education for all. I aim to re-envision solutions to barriers to access and design meaningful and sustainable curricula that provide practical, relevant, and transferable learning experiences centered in a humanistic and soul-affirming frame. I believe in a student, family, and community-centered educational purpose that integrates all stakeholders and spheres of school culture into the educational process, is inextricably informed by the diverse cultural capital that each learner brings to learning and cultivates civic engagement and a global perspective in alignment with 21st Century skills.