Peggy Schwartz, Artistic Director

Peggy Schwartz is a Professor at the University of Massachusetts, part of the Five College Dance Department consortium.  She teaches Dance Education, Improvisation and Composition and Yoga. B.A., University of Rochester; M.S., SUNY/Buffalo; M.A.L.S., Wesleyan University.  She taught in a pilot program for Head Start in Berkeley, California and helped to develop a national model for the Head Start programs nationally.  She was the founding Chair of the Dance Department of the Buffalo Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts, a magnet school for students in grades 5 through 12.   She has published, lectured, conducted workshops and consulted in dance education, curriculum design, national standards in arts education, and the work of Pearl Primus, nationally and internationally.   She has presented regularly at conferences of the Congress on Research in Dance, Dance and the Child International, National Dance Association, National Association of Schools of Dance, National Dance Education Organization.  Peggy was the Founding Associate Editor of the Journal of Dance Education and of the journal, Impulse, Board member of the NDEO and National Representative to Dance and the Child International. She was honored as Massachusetts Dance Educator of the Year in 1994 and received a Presidential Citation from the National Dance Association in 1995.  Peggy was a guest teacher at the Rubin Academy for Music and Dance (Israel), Scripps College, New York State Summer School of the Arts and Pomona College.  She was a consultant to the American Dance Legacy Institute on the work of Dr. Pearl Primus and assisted in developing a "Teaching Etude" for their program.  She was a Five College Dance Department faculty appointment at Hampshire College from 1983 to 1992 and has been on the University of Massachusetts faculty since 1992.  Currently, Peggy is the Principal Investigator on a three year grant (2007-2010) from the President's Office of the University of Massachusetts system. The project is
called "Sankofa: Celebrating Amherst African Roots in American Dance."  She is currently finishing a biography of the late Pearl Primus.