Q: Tell me about your latest book.
A: It's called "Dance and the Alexander Technique: Explaining the Missing Link." I co-wrote it with Luc Vanier.It really talks about our work and what we've been doing the last 10 years, together and separately, teaching dancers the principles of the Alexander Technique through using developmental movement. It stems from my work with Joan and Alex Murray.

Q: I've heard that they're the leading teachers of the Alexander Technique.
A: There are a lot of leading teachers of the technique, but they are definitely some of the best in the world and they happen to live here in Urbana.

Q: You had another book published in the last few years, didn't you?
A: Yes, "The Body Eclectic: Evolving Practices in Dance Training." I co-edited it with Melanie Bales.
As you can see, I always end up collaborating with somebody. When you choreograph, you collaborate with your dancers, the composer, the lighting designer. All these people come together to make something, and I enjoy it.

Q: How long have you been in dance and what kind of changes have you seen in the field?
A: Since I was a little kid. Since I set foot in this university as a freshman, there was no turning back.
The changes: If I had been trained with the information I'm giving my students, I think I would have progressed more quickly.
Not just my training but all dance training has evolved. We've learned more about the body, and teachers have become a lot more knowledgeable in how to teach dance.
The whole field of somatics or body-mind discipline has really entered the dance scene. We write a lot about that in "The Body Eclectic."

Q: Has dance changed much artistically over the years?
A: Of course, modern dance is contemporary so it's supposed to change with the times.

Q: What about all the site-specific dances that UI students are doing now? They were doing those back in the '60s, weren't they?
A: Yes, we did that back in the '70s here. We did all kinds of wild things. We danced on the Quad and in buildings.
One of my professors, Willis Ward, was very avant-garde. He took students, including me as a freshman, to a little colony of clairvoyants, psychics and healers. He took us because he thought we had bright auras.
He was very unusual.
John Cage was here as an artist in-residence. So we had all these odd characters and things happening here that were very different from the mainstream.

Q: Tell me about your early years.
A: I grew up in Detroit until I was 11. I was taking a creative dance class there as a child, and I loved it. I was dancing in the basement and in the yard. I loved the creativity of it and dancing for joy.
When we moved here, one of the first people my father (Bruno Nettl) contacted was Margaret Erlanger, then head of the UI dance department. There was nothing like that for kids my age, so they put me in a ballet class. I hated it so I quit.
I did gymnastics instead because I liked to move through space. Not until I went to college did I begin to train in ballet and then I realized it was great training for dance.

Q: It must be fun to be a dancer.
A: Sometimes when I'm tired and in the studio teaching, all of a sudden it will hit me that I'm in the studio, making up movement to live music, and I think, "How can it be better than that?" It's rewarding. I've always loved teaching, ever since I was little. After I took the creative dance class in Detroit, I would teach the neighborhood kids.