Ann Marie De Angelo

Ann Marie De Angelo is an American dancer, choreographer, director, producer, teacher, and consultant born in Pittston, Pennsylvania, who grew up in Glendale, California. Her mother enrolled her in ballet at age three-and-a-half as a means of helping her overcome shyness before kindergarten. She trained in Burbank, California, under Cecchetti specialist Frederika Mohr at Roland & Reid Dance, and later received a Ford Foundation scholarship to study at the San Francisco Ballet School with former Kirov Ballet principals Anatole Vilzak and Ludmilla Schollar.

De Angelo began her professional performing career with the San Francisco Opera Ballet before moving to New York, where she joined Joffrey II as an apprentice. She became a full member of the Joffrey Ballet in 1973, remaining with the company for a decade. During that time she performed in a wide range of works, including Viva Vivaldi, John Cranko's The Taming of the Shrew, Agnes de Mille's Rodeo in the role of the Cowgirl, Arthur Saint-Léon's reconstructed La Vivandiere, and Twyla Tharp's As Time Goes By, Deuce Coupe II, and Cacklin' Hen, as well as works by Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, William Forsythe, Kurt Jooss, and Antony Tudor, among others. Reviewing her performance in Robert Joffrey's Pas des Deesses, New York Times critic Anna Kisselgoff described her as "a most spectacular dancer who never fails to dazzle," citing her "phenomenal technique." She also performed the role of the Doll in Petrushka alongside Rudolf Nureyev at New York State Theater. In 1979, she appeared on Broadway in Homage to Diaghilev. In the mid-1980s, she joined the Frankfurt Ballet under the direction of William Forsythe.

In 1976, De Angelo competed in the International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria, receiving a special award for technical excellence and appearing as the featured dancer in a CBS television documentary special. At the Varna competition she met ballerina Alicia Alonso, who subsequently invited her to perform at the International Ballet Festival in Havana, Cuba. As a guest artist throughout her performing career, De Angelo danced classical repertoire including Coppelia, Giselle, Swan Lake, and Sleeping Beauty with companies such as the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the Royal Ballet of Flanders, and the National Ballet of Cuba, and appeared at Jacob's Pillow. She performed alongside artists including Margot Fonteyn, Fernando Bujones, Danilo Radojevic, Cynthia Gregory, Maina Gielgud, Flemming Flindt, Māris Liepa, Yoko Morishita, Merle Park, and David Wall, among others, and participated in tours including Stars of American Ballet, Stars of World Ballet in Australia, and a Canadian tour of Dance, Dance, Dance with Frank Augustyn. In 1980 she was featured in the dance film Pavlova: A Tribute to the Legendary Ballerina, released in 1982, for which she also choreographed Autumn Baachanal, performing in that piece with Ron Reagan Jr. In 1989, she performed on Sesame Street with James "Skeeter Rabbit" Higgins in a duet called Stop Dancing, created by Toni Basil.

De Angelo founded her own experimental company, Ballet D'Angelo, in the late 1980s, which toured extensively in Europe and Cuba between 1984 and 1988, presenting works including Zeitgeist I and II, The Last of the Best, and Gypsie Band. She served as founding artistic director of Ballet de Monterrey, where she collaborated with Alicia Alonso and introduced American dancers alongside Cuban talent, US Olympic rhythmic gymnast Charlene Edwards, and hip-hop artist Steffan "Mr. Wiggles" Clemente. She also served as artistic director of Ballet Omaha during the 1990s, and became associate director of the Joffrey Ballet at the time of the company's relocation to Chicago in 1995.

As a choreographer, De Angelo has created more than 60 ballets across ballet, opera, and other dance contexts. Her first work, La Grande Faux Pas, was created in 1980. In 1984 she received a Jerome Robbins Foundation grant to create In Kazmidity, set to music by Léo Delibes, for Joffrey II; the work was later staged for Ballet Trockadero in 1990. Works created for Ballet de Monterrey include Mademoiselle de M, based on Théophile Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin with music by Franz Liszt and Enigma; Le Papillon, to music by Jacques Offenbach; and a restaging of The Nutcracker. In 1990 she created Out of Silence, set to music by Yanni, for the National Ballet of Cuba, as well as a pas de trois titled Lilith featuring Lorena Feijoo; both works were later incorporated into Ballet de Monterrey's Paradiso in 1991, which featured Mr. Wiggles in a leading role, marking the first integration of a street dancer into a traditional ballet production. In 2003, she collaborated with composer Conni Ellisor on The Bell Witch for Nashville Ballet, featuring an original score by Ellisor and three-dimensional scenic design by Gerald Marks; the work earned De Angelo a nomination for a Benois de la Danse Award, and a segment was performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. She choreographed The Promise, a new musical created for the Shanghai Expo 2010, and in 2017 choreographed for a new musical based on Kublai Khan, initially titled Xanadu and later recreated as Dream Dances in Lanqi, Inner Mongolia. Her choreography has been presented at City Center in New York and at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.

De Angelo has taught choreography at the University of California, Irvine, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Hotchkiss School. She is currently the director of DeAngelo Productions, through which she continues to work internationally as a director, choreographer, and teacher.