ebecca Lazier's first concert of her choreography was in a gritty former gun factory in Hartford, CT in 1995. There was no dance floor, one light to illuminate the dancers, and the programs were projected on the wall to save on printing costs. In the 11 years since, Rebecca continued to create dances while living in Hartford, Los Angeles, Istanbul, and for the past seven years, in New York City. Currently, Rebecca is a resident artist at Joyce SoHo. This year-long residency award provides rehearsal space, mentorship with choreographer Susan Marshall and the use of a rehearsal assistant. She is also an Artist-in-Residence at Movement Research, where over the course of 2007 she will create a new work and participate in feedback sessions designed to provoke and enrich the creative process. Alongside the evolution of her choreography Rebecca has pursued a career teaching dance in higher education, and is the Associate Director of the Dance Program at Princeton University.

Rebecca's first dance training in Nova Scotia and at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet was focused on ballet. She was exposed to contemporary dance ideas at Jacob's Pillow, under the guidance of post-modern expert Sally Banes. She attended the Juilliard School where she received her B.F.A in 1990. She performed for eight years with choreographer Laura Glenn and performed with Pedro Alejandro for three. In Istanbul she was featured dancer in the work of Aydin Teker. Rebecca trained extensively in Ideokinesis with Irene Dowd, as well as in developmental movement with Martha Eddy and Bartenieff Fundamentals with Laura Glenn, all of which continue to inform her dancing, choreography, and teaching practices.

In 1994 Rebecca moved to Connecticut to teach at Wesleyan University, Trinity College, and the Hartford Ballet/University of Hartford. Rebecca started to focus on creating solos and began a series of collaborations with percussionist/composer Shane Shanahan (currently with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project). While in Hartford she also started collaborations with theater director Bartlett Sher (Artistic Director Intiman Theater, Seattle) for productions seen at Hartford Stage, Portland Stage Company, and Trinity College and was awarded commissions for dances from the Hartford Conservatory, Trinity College, Westport Arts Center, and the World Special Olympics. In addition through the Department of Education, Rebecca was invited to join a tour to Perm, Russia to teach and perform her solo Twilight at the Diaghilev Museum.

In 1998 Rebecca was appointed a Visiting Artist in the department World Arts and Cultures at UCLA. There, in addition to teaching composition, technique, and graduate level courses in movement theories, Rebecca created solo work that integrated text with autobiographic stories and a narrative trio with music by sound designer/composer Jody Elff, A Stone's Throw.

During 1998-1999 Rebecca was the first foreigner to be artist-in-residence at Mimar Sinan Conservatory in Istanbul, Turkey. The formative year provided the opportunity to work exclusively with twelve dancers to create seven dances that were performed throughout Istanbul and toured to Izmir, Bursa and Ankara. Rebecca received a grant from the United States Information Service to bring Shane Shanahan to Turkey to perform their works together at the First Modern Dance Festival, hosted by the Middle Eastern Technical University in Ankara and on tour to Urfa, Batman and Adyiman.

Arriving in New York in 1999, after six years of travels, Rebecca set out to work with a consistent group of professionals, to remove herself from the choreography, and focus on developing group work. Rebecca was chosen to present a full-length concert at Joyce SoHo with a group of dancers from New York City and Turkey. Her first New York concert, Rebecca presented her solo work and three collaborations with Shanahan, called Songs About Water.

Rebecca was awarded the Bessie Schoenberg Choreographic residency by The Yard, a colony for performing arts on Martha's Vineyard in the summer of 2000, which provided the opportunity to create Falling Awake

In September 2000 Rebecca won a mid-career grant for Dance Professionals from the Canada Council for the Arts to create Vanish, a commission from the Scotia Festival of Music in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Performed to a live rendition of Schoenberg's String Trio Opus 45, the dance reconsiders Schoenberg's inclusion of his musical theories and narrative experiences by creating multiple choreographic structures to parallel the content, not sound, of the music. Recently, Rebecca was invited to present a lecture demonstration of the choreographic processes of Vanish at the International SoundMoves conference at Roehampton University, London. Her subsequent paper "Making Schoenberg Dance" will appear in a forthcoming issue of Opera Quarterly.

In July 2001 Rebecca received a commission from Columbia College in Chicago to create a work and invited Terrain to present an evening of work at its Dance Center. The performance marked Rebecca's interest in creating humorous dances with Devastatingly Foolhardy. Also in 2001, Rebecca was one of the selected artists for The Field's Artward Bound program, which provided the space and time to create the introspective solo This.

Later that summer, Rebecca was awarded a residency at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program in Woodside, CA and named an Honorary Fellow, a position supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The fellowship was an intensive, month-long residency with five dancers from Terrain, where Rebecca created Nurse, a satire on healthcare and body-image. Returning to New York in the fall of 2001, Rebecca received a residency at the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center to prepare for her season at The Kitchen (April 2002) where she presented a complete evening of all of the dances created in the previous two years.

Throughout 2000-2003 Rebecca continued to be a Visiting Artist at UCLA for one quarter a year and was appointed Visiting Artist at Muhlenberg College in 2000. She was chosen to be the Festival Director of the White Mountain Summer Dance Festival in 2002 where Terrain became the company-in-residence. Rebecca has directed the Festival for four years and creates a new piece each summer: ...And Tea Was Served, a mad-cap dancing murder-mystery, Mirth, a comic duo for two refugees from a nursing home, Elegy, the second movement of Serenade, a somber duet about unrequited love, and Dance Phase, a dance inspired by the structural development and emotional lines in Steve Riech's seminal Piano Phase.

In 2003 Rebecca accepted a position as Lecturer in the Program in Theater and Dance at Princeton University. Through the Works & Process program at The Guggenheim in December 2003, Rebecca was invited to direct and choreograph Fred Ho's martial arts epic and irreverent, Journey Beyond the West: Further Adventures of Monkey, with eleven martial artists and five dancers. Support for her next work with Terrain, the parody Insider's Guide to the Secret Rules of Post-Modern Dance was provided by Brooklyn Arts Exchange through a space grant and performance opportunity.

Terrain performed a full evening concert at Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church in September 2004. The season featured the three dances created in the previous two years in addition to two new works, You Are Here, a disturbing solo that balances multiple demands on our attention, and Transparent Body, a duet with dancer Christopher Williams and collaboration with electric violinist Dan Trueman.

Spring 2005 saw a unique opportunity for Rebecca to assist the choreographer Millicent Hodgson in re-imagining the lost Diaghliev-era ballet, Le Pas d'Acier (The Steel Step). With a live performance of the Prokofiev score, the fully realized set designed by constructivist Georges Yakoulov, and 24 dancers, Millicent and Rebecca followed what was known of the original intentions of the composer and scenic artist based on the research of musicologist Simon Morrison of Princeton University and Lesley-Anne Sayers of the University of Surrey. Interest from The New York Times, critic Marcia Seigel, and the international community prompted the creation of a DVD which will be released by the BBC this year, to record the process and performance at Princeton.

Rebecca has twice received creative research funding at Princeton from the Council on the Humanities, Brown Fund, and the University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The funding has led in part to the creation of Serenade: My First Ballet, a re-thinking of how we strive for, and are distracted by beauty and of Dance Phase. Excerpts of Serenade have been performed in New York at The Flea Theater, at the White Mountain Summer Dance Festival, and were most recently featured in the program Great Dance: Great Dancers at The Yard on a program with Susan Marshall and David Dorfman.

Rebecca was named Associate Head of Dance at Princeton University in fall 2006. The coming year will provide opportunities for research through the residencies at the Joyce and Movement Research; a production of Serenade at Princeton; and a tour to the International Computer Music Conference in New Orleans to perform Transparent Body.