Dr. Ann Dils is Professor and former Chair of the Department of Dance at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where she teaches dance studies, honors, and general education courses. In Spring 2024, she will teach a course in dance history at USC. Dils is also part of the Circle of Dance Masters, a group of senior dance pedagogues and scholars mentoring students in Towson University’s Master of Arts in Dance Education. 

A dance historian with interests in movement analysis, feminist theory and research methods, and cultural studies, Dils is working on a collection of essays about vernacular dance in New York City in the mid 1930s.  She is the author of numerous articles in journals and edited collections.  Additional works are, with Ann Cooper Albright, Moving History/ Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader (2001) and Accelerated Motion: Towards a New Dance Literacy, a National Endowment for the Arts-funded digital collection of materials about dance. 

Dils served as Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNCG) from 2010-2013 and taught in the Department of Dance at UNCG and at Teacher’s College, Columbia University. Dils served the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD), now part of Dance Studies Association, as editor of Dance Research Journal, president of CORD’s board of directors, and recipient of the Dixie Durr Award for Outstanding Service to Dance Research.  A former dancer and choreographer, Dils received a PhD from the Department of Performance Studies, New York University, and an MA in Dance from The Ohio State University.