Ella Baff
American dancer
Ella Baff was executive director of Jacob's Pillow from 1998 until 2015, where she was most known for her work as executive and artistic director of the annual Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival.
Education
Baff was born in New York City and grew up on the Upper East Side. While in high school she took dance and also studied piano, violin, and harp. She began university at the University of New Mexico, where she studied modern dance and English literature. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1976. Following graduation she held multiple jobs including teaching in juvenile prisons and on an island in the Aleutian Islands.
Career
Until 1997 Baff was the director of education and community programming at Cal Performances, an arts organization at the University of California, Berkeley. While there she was known for her work in programming contemporary and ethnic dance performances.
Starting in 1998, Baff was the executive and artistic director of Jacob's Pillow, a 225-acre historic site that encompasses an international dance festival, professional school, archives, exhibits, artist residencies, public venues, and education and community programs. Under her leadership, the organization was designated a National Historic Landmark.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ella Baff” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.