In addition to writing and speaking about art history, Nancy G. Heller enjoys many other pursuits:  she once worked as an inventory clerk for men's underwear at a large mid-western department store; decades later she celebrated her 62nd birthday by taking an introductory class in the Flying Trapeze (she was awful, and absolutely terrified); she was a "super" (extra) in "Petrushka" with American Ballet Theatre at NYC's Lincoln Center during the summer of 1973; that same year she appeared on a long-defunct t.v. game show hosted by the late, great Bill Cullen (she lost); and for a decade, starting in 1984, she performed with a Spanish-dance company based in Washington, DC.  This troupe presented flamenco, of course, but also Spanish classical, neoclassical, and folk dance, appearing at venues throughout Washington (including the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater, the National Geographic Society, the Embassy of Spain, and the Organization of American States), plus at several places in Baltimore, NYC, Boston, and London.

In addition, Heller loves the sounds of different languages and has studied French and Spanish intensively, with brief forays into Italian, German, Hebrew, Arabic, and American Sign Language.  She has played the agogo (a Brazilian percussion instrument) in a Philadelphia-based samba band; sung in amateur choirs that performed works including Brahms's Requiem and Carmina Burana; and studied many types of non-Spanish dance--e.g.: modern dance (Graham technique), basic ballet (Vaganova), Bharatanatyam (a classical form from South India), and traditional/folk dances from the Balkans and Middle East.  She has written dance criticism and feature stories for publications in Washington, DC, NYC, and Philadelphia; and she likes being silly.