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 her
undergraduate degree in Religious Studies and Anthropology from
Macalester
College, 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
both
coasts of the US, as well as to Germany, England, France,
Hungary, and Bulgaria. Her
artistic palate is broad and draws on ballet, modern, jazz, folk
and social dance
traditions in varying degrees and combinations based on the needs
and impulses of
the work being created. The common threads are a belief in the
power of movement
to viscerally capture the beauty and variety of human experience,
expressed
through a deep musicality and the motivation to communicate and
connect with the
audience. Her concert dance choreography has been seen in
Minnesota at venues
including MDA/Walker Art Center Choreographers’ Evenings, The
Minnesota Fringe
Festival, and the Minnesota Ballet. In New York, her work has
been presented by
Ballet Builders, Dixon Place, Symphony Space, DanceNow/NYC and at
Madison
Square 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 two
Society of Directors and Choreographers Foundation Observerships,
in 2002 to
assist John Carrafa on A Little Night Music at the Kennedy
Center, and in 2005 to
assist Kathleen Marshall on Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Public
Theatre’s
Shakespeare in the Park in New York City. Her own theatre
choreography has been
seen at venues in Minnesota, New York, South Dakota, and Seattle,
Washington. As a
teacher, Rebecca has been on the faculties of St. Olaf College,
Marymount Manhattan
College, 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 various
American College Dance Association North Central Regional
Conferences, as well as
abroad 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 Lance
Benishek, for the filming of a teaching DVD on The Big Apple, a
famous dance of the
Swing Era, nearly lost but now the subject of renewed interest
from swing dancers
around the world.

Rebecca lived in the Cities from 1988 to 2001 (mostly in St.
Paul’s Mac Groveland
and Merriam Park neighborhoods). As a performer she worked as an
independent
dancer with various choreographers including Sandy Agustin, Brad
and Cyndi
Garner, Heidi Geier/Soft Eyed Collaborations, Jill Heaberlin,
Marge Maddux,
Christine Maginnis, Paula Mann, and Cathy Young, among others,
and was a
company member of Ethnic Dance Theatre and Lance Benishek’s
American Cultural
Arts Society Dancers. She taught ballet at Zenon and St. Olaf
College, and
administrated for Work and Work Associates, Marge Maddux for the
Society of
Dance History Scholars, Cathy Young Dance, and for James Sewell
Ballet as their
Operations 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 and
musical theatre as well as providing choreography for dance
concerts and musical
theatre productions. In the spring of 2012, she was awarded
Tenure and promoted
to her current rank of Associate Professor. Theatre Choreography
credits include A
Year 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