Ann Sickels Mathews (†2021), US teacher of the Alexander Technique and Head of Training.
Life
Ann Sickels Mathews grew up in Greenwich Village and attended a progressive school inspired by John Dewey’s educational approach. She started to learn playing the piano at the age of five and would later study singing. She studied at The High School of Music and Art, the Sarah Lawrence College, and the Bank Street College of Education.
Ann Mathews started having lessons in the Technique in 1970 with Patrick Macdonald (her stepdaughter, Christine Mathews Batten, was training at the time with Macdonald). Together with Troup Mathews she trained at ACAT with Judy Leibowitz in New York 1973–75. Ann Mathews had lessons with Misha Magidov, Nelly Ben-Or, Rivka Cohen, Shaike Hermlin, and Tom Lemens. She also attended Walter and Dilys Carrington’s refresher courses.
She was co-director with her husband Troup Mathews and her stepdaughter, Christine Mathews Batten, of their teachers training course in New York: the Institute for Research, Development and Education in the Alexander Technique (IRDEAT), aka the Mathews School. It ran 1983 or 1984 to about 2004. Starting in 1986 she taught for 20 years at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in the Graduate Acting Program.
She died in 2021 at the age of 95.
Writings
- ‘Implications for Education in the Work of F. M. Alexander – An exploratory project in a public school classroom’ by Ann Mathews is a master’s thesis, reporting on a two-year project of teaching children the Technique.[1]
- ‘Discoveries on my Alexander journey – F. M. Alexander Memorial Address 2007’ by Ann Sickels Mathews.[2]
Interviews
- ‘Ann Sickels Mathews in her own words’ by Ann Sickels Mathews, Elizabeth Huebner, Phyllis G. Richmond.[3]
- ‘The Challenge of Aging’ by Ann Mathews interviewed by Ruth Rootberg.[4]
Obituaries
- ‘Remembering Ann Mathews’ by Ruth Rootberg.[5]
Ann Sickels Mathews †25 March 2021.
See also Troup Matthews.
