To say that the Director of Performing Arts, Bettie-Ann Candelora, loves the performing arts would be more than an understatement. Mrs. Candelora, the Director of Performing Arts at Hackley School, has been surrounded by the arts for her entire her life. Her mother was a music teacher and while her father was not that musical at all, he loved that his wife was. Mrs. Candelora started at a very young age by taking piano lessons.

“My first real instrument was the flute in seventh grade, and once I started playing the flute, I realized how much I loved music. At that point, I thought this is what I’m going to do,” she said.

In high school, Mrs. Candelora took part in all of the plays and sang in the choir. “I feel like it’s more of a pull than a drive. I am just attracted to it. If I go too long without doing something [involved with the performing arts] there is a hole inside of me; there is a need to do it. If I walk into a house and there’s a piano, I just want to go to the piano and I want to play,” said Mrs. Candelora, of her dedication to the performing arts.

After Mrs. Candelora graduated from Clemson University and received her master’s degree from Goucher College, she tucked music away and spent the next 18 years of her life as a professional actress. She began her career in theater, and performed in a number of plays and musicals. Her favorite musical that she’s ever been in was The Will Rogers Follies. “It was this super high energy, but light-hearted show. From the beginning to the end, you were just running and changing costumes and going back out. I’m not a dancer, but I got to dance in that show,” said Mrs. Candelora.

She and her husband eventually moved to where the film industry had moved: Florida. “We made a living doing that, just film and TV for a lot of years,” said Mrs. Candelora. The film industry was a fluid one – “Then it left as it tends to do, so then it was a typical example of how I had to readjust. I actually worked at theme parks for a number of years.”

She took part in an improvisation comedy for Disney World. Rather than being a performer who ran around in a costume, she was as an actress at the comedy club in Pleasure Island, a part of the Walt Disney Resort.

Today, Mrs. Candelora is still a member of the Screen Actors Guild and Equity Association, but, for the past 16 years, she has worked in education. “I just feel incredibly lucky because I get to have the job where students want to take our courses or else they’re not in there. You never get a student who’s uninterested or unmotivated,” she said.

Mrs. Candelora worked at Lake Highland Preparatory School in Orlando, Florida. At Lake Highland, Mrs. Candelora was part of a campaign to raise money for a brand-new performing arts facility. “I loved doing that. I loved helping with the design and bringing the faculty into the design,” she said.

Mrs. Candelora loves being at Hackley. “From my first day, I felt like I was a part of this school. I am so thrilled to be part of this beautiful area at this gorgeous school,” she said.

As the Performing Arts Director, she has three priorities. Her first priority was to make sure people knew about the PAC and the events that were taking place. “I’ve been working to increase our visibility. We have these amazing teachers and this amazing student body,” she said. Her second priority was to “create a real team” within the PAC. “The collage concert this year was an example of everyone coming together, and input from all of these different people to create this really beautiful performance piece,” she said. Her third “initiative is to help promote a new performing arts center.”

Mrs. Candelora believes that every child and “every teenager should seriously study some aspect of the performing arts. It plays into whatever you want to do later in life,” she said. Her affection and devotion to the performing arts and music is clear. “I think there’s something very deep that touches all of us with music on different levels,” she said.