A Duluth native, Rebecca Katz Harwood’s eclectic career has included work as a performer, choreographer, teacher, researcher, and arts administrator. After studying and performing with the Duluth Ballet from the ages of seven to seventeen, she received her undergraduate degree in Religious Studies and Anthropology from Macalester College in St. Paul, MN. After another decade in the Twin Cities and a move to NYC, she earned her MFA in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her creative work has taken her around the Midwest, to both coasts of the US, and to Germany, England, France, Hungary, Sweden, and Bulgaria. She returned to Duluth in 2006 to join the faculty of the Department of Theatre at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where she teaches various studio and lecture courses in dance and musical theatre as well as choreographs and directs for UMD Theatre. An Associate Professor since 2012, she became Department Head in 2024.