Rebecca Nettl-Fiol

Biography

Rebecca Nettl-Fiol is a teacher, choreographer, and author specializing in the integration of the Alexander Technique and somatic practices in dance training. She is a co-developer, along with former students Luc Vanier and Elizabeth Johnson, of a movement analysis/repatterning system called Framework for Integration, resulting in the upcoming book, Moving into Skill: A Framework for Integration. She is also the co-author of Dance and the Alexander Technique: Exploring the Missing Link and The Body Eclectic: Evolving Practices in Dance Training (all published by University of Illinois Press). Other publications include journal articles, a chapter in Martha Eddy’s Mindful Movement: The Somatic Arts and Conscious Action, and a chapter on the integration of her teaching and research in An Illinois Sampler: Talking about Teaching on the Prairie. She is a frequent presenter at conferences nationally and internationally, including a keynote presenter at the Dance and Somatic Practices Conference at Coventry University, England; Movementis Brain, Body, Cognition conferences at Oxford University and Harvard Medical School, the International Alexander Technique Congress, and Dancing in the Millennium conference in Washington, D.C. She also presents regularly at the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science, the American Society for Alexander Technique, the National Dance Education Organization, and the Freedom to Move Conference on Dance and the Alexander Technique. She served on the board of directors for the American Society for Alexander Technique and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices.

Rebecca is active as a guest teacher, both for university dance programs and Alexander Technique teachers and training courses. She is on the faculty of Alexander Technique Urbana, and was a teacher in Joan and Alex Murray’s training course for many years. Rebecca has been instrumental in establishing dance science and somatics as an integral part of the curriculum starting in the 1980s when the field of was relatively new. She sees teaching, research, and learning as a complex and evolving practice that continually fuels her work as a university professor in the field of dance. For several years, she was the College of Fine and Applied Arts representative in the university’s Teaching Academy, and in 2012 she received the University’s Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. She is also a recipient of the College of Fine and Applied Arts award for Excellence in Service (2005) and Outstanding Faculty (1998).

As the daughter of ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl, music has always played a central role in Rebecca’s life and choreographic research. Most recently she has collaborated with the Jupiter String Quartet and the Illinois Modern Ensemble, and composers Steve Taylor and Toby Twining. Her choreography has been presented in New York City, Chicago, Quito, Ecuador, annually at KCPA, and at many American College Dance Association gala concerts throughout the years. Her work was selected for performances at the Harvest Contemporary Dance Festival in Chicago, and in New York at both Dance New Amsterdam and the Ailey Citigroup Theatre as part of American Dance Guild’s performance festivals, and at PS 122 as part of the FranceOff! festival. Her opera and musical theatre choreography includes over 50 productions at various venues including Interlochen Center for the Arts, Illinois Opera Theatre, Peoria Civic Opera, SUNY Potsdam, NY, Champaign-Urbana Theatre Company, Celebration Company, and Lyric Theatre @ Illinois.

Nettl-Fiol has a long history with Dance at Illinois, from an undergraduate student in the 1970s, to a part time faculty member in the early 1980s, to her current position as Professor. She served as Interim Head of the Dance Department from 2001-2005, Acting Head in 1998 and 2016, was BFA Program Director from 1991-2001, and BFA co-director from 2012-2022. She received her MA in Dance and Choreography from The Ohio State University, certified as a Labanotation teacher and reconstructor at the Dance Notation Bureau in New York, and received her Alexander Technique certification from the Urbana Centre for Alexander Technique with Joan and Alex Murray in 1990. She teaches courses in dance anatomy and kinesiology, Alexander technique for dancers, and graduate courses in somatics in dance training and physical practice.