Julie Akerly is the co-director of artist residency space, [nueBOX], founder of Phoenix Dance Observer, artistic director of J.A.M. (Julie Akerly Movement), and dancer with Jordan Daniels Dance. She received an MFA in Dance and Interdisciplinary Multimedia and Performance from Arizona State University. She is interested in expanding audience interaction and engagement through adapting the traditional proscenium performance stage into a generative communal space where the performance can be viewed through a versatile shifting lens.

Julie received her BA at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, where her primary focus was on discovering the artistry of innovative choreography, and where she began to engage in dance technology and dance film. Julie has had dance film works screened in the UK at GLOW, and in the United States at Breaking Ground, Bustin' a Madcap, and (e)Motion.

Cross-disciplinary collaboration is also an important aspect of several projects Julie has been a part of. She is currently working on an interactive piece The Sill funded by EMERGE 2014 with media artist Matthew Mosher, and sound designer Tony Obr. She has also worked in interdisciplinary media design teams for her most well known works Vertigo (2013), Genesis (2013), and Separation: Short Range Repulsion (2012). She has also performed with D&Spair, an interdisciplinary improvisation group in the Phoenix area.

Julie Akerly has also presented her research at Dance Under Construxtion XII, titled "Pixelated Interpretations of 3-Dimensional Woman," in 2012. In 2010, she conducted a research project called "Resistance and Surrender in Tango Dance: Negotiating Cultural Identities and Social Class in Early Argentina," at the Latin America Research Symposium, and has been published in the Journal of Scholarly Endeavor. She has been published in the 2014 NIME proceedings for her research of "Separation: Short Range Repulsion."