Julie Nathanielsz is eternally interested in how we are composing ourselves in life, art and culture from the ground of bodily intelligence. She works in the mediums of movement, poetry, performance, teaching and video, where affect, identity, and nature collide.

Noted for its “deep exploration, poetic connections, and relentless questioning of the body,” Julie’s artistic work received recognition over the years from the Austin Critics Table for choreography, curation, performance, sound design, and ensemble performance. In 2016-2017 she traveled to Indonesia as a Fulbright Scholar to pursue her project Place Making Body/Body Making Place. This life-long project is a research into our sensual and storied connection to place, and the inherent possibilities for reciprocity, relationship, and repair in place-based, movement-centered arts. Julie resides in Central New York, on ancestral, unceded Cayuga land.

Since 1996, Julie has been an initiator of and collaborator on numerous creative projects in a diversity of communities of movers. Julie was a member of dance-theatre company Margery Segal/NERVE (1998-2006), the Improvisational Movement Project, which she co-founded, and The Meeting Point, which she founded and directed from 2007-2014. She was co-ordinator, faculty, and performer with the integrated dance project Body Shift for five years. Julie has also performed in the works of Leyya Mona Tawil (destroy//Providence), luciana achugar (OTRO TEATRO), and composer Sarah Hennies (Passing). She collaborates regularly with friends and colleagues Heloise Gold, Elaine Dove and Margit Galanter. Her stage and video work has been presented by Fusebox Festival (Working the Line, What is Common), grayDUCK gallery (SEED/BED), No Idea Festival (with Michael Zerang), Forklift Danceworks (Ninetet, Just Psoas You Know), Church of the Friendly Ghost, Bodycartography Project, New York Dance Force, and more. Julie was a Saari fellow in Finland in 2013 and 2015.

Julie’s classes are influenced by a physical practice woven within and across lineages of Authentic Movement/Contemplative Dance Practice, the Amerta Movement approach of Suprapto Suryodarmo, Lisa Nelson’s Tuning Scores, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and the School for Body Mind Centering, Steve Paxton’s Material for the Spine, Joan Skinner’s Skinner Releasing Technique, and studies in developmental and embryological movement.  She has taught movement and dance independently for many years, as well as for Texas State University, Austin Community College, and Cornell University, bringing a critical lens to classes in modernist/post modernist technique, improvisation, creative process, and experiential anatomy. 

Julie’s writing has been published in the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, Contact Quarterly and the edited volume Skinner Releasing Technique (Triarchy Press). An NTS Level 3 archery coach and instructor, Julie is the author of Whole Body/Back Body: A Handbook for Archers focused on bringing more body awareness training to this target sport.

A certified teacher of Skinner Releasing™ at Introductory and On-Going levels, Julie also holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Texas, Austin.