Studio Stories: Reminiscing on Twin Cities Dance with Rebecca Katz Harwood - Season 6, Episode 83

Rebecca Katz Harwood’s eclectic career has included work as a performer,choreographer, teacher, researcher, and arts administrator. She received herundergraduate degree in Religious Studies and Anthropology from MacalesterCollege, and her MFA in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts(NYU Tisch). Her work as a performer has taken her around the Midwest, to bothcoasts of the US, as well as to Germany, England, France, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Herartistic palate is broad and draws on ballet, modern, jazz, folk and social dancetraditions in varying degrees and combinations based on the needs and impulses ofthe work being created. The common threads are a belief in the power of movementto viscerally capture the beauty and variety of human experience, expressedthrough a deep musicality and the motivation to communicate and connect with theaudience. Her concert dance choreography has been seen in Minnesota at venuesincluding MDA/Walker Art Center Choreographers’ Evenings, The Minnesota FringeFestival, and the Minnesota Ballet. In New York, her work has been presented byBallet Builders, Dixon Place, Symphony Space, DanceNow/NYC and at MadisonSquare Garden as part of the NYU Tisch Salute Graduation Celebration of 2005.In the realm of musical theatre, Ms. Katz Harwood has been fortunate to receive twoSociety of Directors and Choreographers Foundation Observerships, in 2002 toassist John Carrafa on A Little Night Music at the Kennedy Center, and in 2005 toassist Kathleen Marshall on Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Public Theatre’sShakespeare in the Park in New York City. Her own theatre choreography has beenseen at venues in Minnesota, New York, South Dakota, and Seattle, Washington. As ateacher, Rebecca has been on the faculties of St. Olaf College, Marymount ManhattanCollege, and for the past sixteen years, the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD)Department of Theatre. She has taught master classes and workshops in modern,jazz, and various social dances of the swing era in Minnesota, Nebraska, at variousAmerican College Dance Association North Central Regional Conferences, as well asabroad in England and Germany. The fall of 2011 took her to Munich, Germany,where she was featured as a co-lead instructor with social dance historian LanceBenishek, for the filming of a teaching DVD on The Big Apple, a famous dance of theSwing Era, nearly lost but now the subject of renewed interest from swing dancersaround the world.Rebecca lived in the Cities from 1988 to 2001 (mostly in St. Paul’s Mac Grovelandand Merriam Park neighborhoods). As a performer she worked as an independentdancer with various choreographers including Sandy Agustin, Brad and CyndiGarner, Heidi Geier/Soft Eyed Collaborations, Jill Heaberlin, Marge Maddux,Christine Maginnis, Paula Mann, and Cathy Young, among others, and was acompany member of Ethnic Dance Theatre and Lance Benishek’s American CulturalArts Society Dancers. She taught ballet at Zenon and St. Olaf College, andadministrated for Work and Work Associates, Marge Maddux for the Society ofDance History Scholars, Cathy Young Dance, and for James Sewell Ballet as theirOperations Manager.Since the fall of 2006, Ms. Katz Harwood has been based back in her native Duluth,Minnesota at UMD, where she teaches studio and academic classes in dance andmusical theatre as well as providing choreography for dance concerts and musicaltheatre productions. In the spring of 2012, she was awarded Tenure and promotedto her current rank of Associate Professor. Theatre Choreography credits include AYear with Frog and Toad, Urinetown!, Sugar, South Pacific, Little Shop of Horrors,Cinderella, She Loves Me, Time’s Up, and the world premiere of Maxa: The Maddest