The New York Baroque Dance Co.

FACULTY

Sandra Noll Hammond, a recipient of the Ballet Lifetime Achievement Award from CORPS International, has embraced ballet, modern dance and historical ballet as a performer, teacher and choreographer  on the professional stage and in university dance programs.  Her research, lectures, and publications on ballet technique and history have been lauded by the dance community and the press. Hammond’s professional training was guided by ballet icons  Antony Tudor, Margaret Craske, Thalia Mara, and Arthur Mahoney, with a major influence from Martha Hill at Juilliard. Her publications include two college text books,Ballet Basics (now in its 5th edition and with recent editions in Korea and Finland) and Ballet: Beyond the Basics . Her research into the history of ballet technique has appeared in articles for Dance Chronicle, Dance Research Journal, Dance Research (London), Journal of Social History, International Encyclopedia of Dance, Dictionnaire de la Danse, and numerous chapters in edited books on ballet. As guest artist and lecturer, Hammond has presented her work internationally in Copenhagen, Paris, London, Ghent, Leuven, Sydney, Turku, Helsinki, Mexico City, and Mérida, Yucatan. She is the recipient of research grants from the University of Arizona, University of Hawaii, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She received the President’s Citation for Meritorious Teaching from the University of Hawaii, and she is an Honorary Member of CORPS de Ballet.

Richard Powers has been teaching contemporary and historic social dance for over 35 years.  He leads workshops around the world and is currently a full-time instructor at Stanford University’s Dance Division. Praised to the skies by his students, he is very much in demand and we are fortunate to have him at our workshop. Looking at his teaching engagements from now until November, I am impressed with his commitment to all who wish to dance:  from the beautiful grassy fields of Kentucky to the onion domes of Moscow. Workshops are to be held in: Makinac Island, MI; Fairbanks, AK; Santa Barbara, CA; Santa Clara, CA; Boulder, CO; Chelyabinsk, Russia; Moscow, Russia; Paris, France;  Berea, KY; Bern, Switzerland; Catalina Island, CA.  Historic Dance Performances Richard has directed include 19th century and ragtime dance at the Smithsonian Institution, Henry Ford Museum, the National Governors Conference, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Ballet Company, the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival, leading the Palace Hotel’s Valentines Ball, St. Moritz, Switzerland (featured on CBS “60 Minutes”); performance for Prince and Princess Mikasa of Japan; and a tour of the former Soviet Union. For more about Richard Powers, please see his website: http://richardpowers.com/

Catherine Turocy Planning Ahead, photo by Catherine Andrako

Catherine Turocy, recognized as one of today’s leading choreographer/reconstructors and stage directors in 17th and 18th century period performance, with over 60 Baroque operas to her credit,  has been decorated by the French Republic as a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters.   She received the prestigious BESSIE Award in New York City for sustained achievement in choreography as well as the Natalie Skelton Award for Artistic Excellence.  In 1980 she received the Dance Film Association Award for “The Art of Dancing” video produced with Celia Ipiotis and Jeff Bush.  NEA International Exchange Fellowships supported extended visits where she lived in London and Paris, conducting research and interacting with other artists.  In the 1980’s she worked under famed stage directors Pier Luigi Pizzi and Jean Louis Martinoty.

A founding member of the Society for Dance History Scholars, Ms. Turocy has lectured on period performance practices around the world including the Royal Academies of Dance in London, Stockholm and Copenhagen; the Festival Estival in Paris and The Society for Early Music in Tokyo.  She has served as consultant to Clark Tippett of American Ballet Theater and Edward Villella of the Miami City Ballet.  As a writer she has contributed chapters to dance history text books, articles to Opera News , Early Music America and Dance Magazine, many which have been translated into French, German, Japanese and Korean. A chapter in Janet Roseman’s book, Dance Masters: Interviews with Legends of Dance, published by Routledge is dedicated to her work.   Books in which Turocy has authored chapters include:   Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader; Creating Dance: A Traveler’s Guide and  Dance on its Own Terms: Histories and Methodologies, eds. Melanie Bales and Karen Eliot, published by Oxford and is due out in April, 2013.

 Sarah Edgar earned a BFA in dance from the Ohio State University in 2000 and immediately afterward joined The New York Baroque Dance Company. With the NYBDC, she has performed at the Drottningholm Theater, the International Händelfestspiele Göttingen, Danspace at St. Mark’s Theater, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Potsdam Sanssouci Music Festival. While living in NYC, she also presented her choreography, including the full-length show Courtesan, and curated the genre-mixing experimental programs Modern Burlesque and Avant/Après le Déluge.  Since moving to Cologne, Germany in 2006, she has been an active freelance performer and toured Italy and Belgium with Deda Christina Colonna’s The Fairy Queen.  In Cologne, she has co-founded the “postmodern baroque” group The Punks Delight with the musician Beate Alsdorf. The group has produced several performances, and they were invited to perform at the Kölner Musiknacht 2010. The Punks Delight is currently in the planning phase for Psiché; or, Come Back Amor.  Sarah Edgar continues to perform with The New York Baroque Dance Company and regularly works as Ms. Turocy’s assistant, most recently as the directing assistant for the operaTeseo at the 2011 Internationale Händelfestspiele Göttingen.  She has taught many master classes in baroque dance, including classes at New YorkUniversity and CornellUniversity, as well as in Germany at the TANZhautnah Festival, Schwetzinger Tanztage, and the Musikhochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. She has also given scholarly papers on eighteenth century dance at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, and the Utrecht Early Music Festival. In 2010, she began studying for her MA in Tanzwissenschaft (dance studies) at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. This past February she was the choreographer for the production of Dido and Aeneas with the Haymarket Opera in Chicago.

 James Richman is Artistic Director/Conductor of Concert Royal and the Dallas Bach Society.  He is a prominent harpsichordist and fortepianist, as well as one of today’s leading conductors of Baroque music and opera. The first musician since Leonard Bernstein to graduate Harvard, Juilliard, and the Curtis Institute of Music, James Richman studied conducting with Max Rudolf and Herbert Blomstedt, piano with Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Rosina Lhevinne and Rudolf Serkin, and harpsichord with Albert Fuller and Kenneth Gilbert.  He holds a degree in the History of Science magna cum laude from HarvardCollege.  A recipient of the prestigious United States-France Exchange Fellowship from the NEA, he was knighted by the French government in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1995 in recognition of his contributions to the field of music. Richman has been a prizewinner in four international competitions for early keyboard instruments, including first prize in the Bodky Competition of the Cambridge Society of Early Music, laureate of the Bruges Harpsichord Competition and bronze medal in the Paris Harpsichord Competition of the Festival Estival and in the First International Fortepiano Competition (Paris).  In appearances at the Mostly Mozart Festival, the Spoleto Festival USA, the E. Nakamichi Baroque Festival, the Boston Early Music Festival, as well as in regular series in New York, he has organized revivals of such important works as Gluck’s Orfeo, Handel’s Ariodante, Alessandro, Acis and Galatea, Il Pastor Fido and Terpsicore, Purcell’s King Arthur, Monteverdi’s Incoronazione di Poppea, J.C. Bach’s Amadis des Gaules, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Le Devin du Village, and seven operas of Jean-Philippe Rameau including Hippolyte et Aricie, Pygmalion, and Les Indes Galantes.

Recent recordings by Concert Royal on Centaur Records include Handel’s Terpsichore; Rameau’s Pygmalion & L’Impatience, and Rameau’s Zephyre & Clerambault’s Triomphe de la Paix.

GUEST ARTISTS
Catherine Turocy and Bruno Benne are setting the ground work for creating a French/American Exchange at the Santa Barbara workshop.  This year Bruno will be attending  to learn more about  historical dance in the United States. He will also be demonstrating his reconstructions and his contemporary work using Baroque dance technique.  We are working on funding to bring him back as a teacher for next year. Click here for Handel’s Alessandro withstage direction and choreography by Lucinda Childs (Bruno was her assistant on this project).

Here is a list of the companies he has danced with:

2005 à 2013- Fêtes-Galantes directed by Béatrice Massin

2006 à 2013- L’Eventail, directed by Marie-Geneviève Massé,

 Here is a list of operas and films he has worked in:

2013 – Alessandro, Haendel – Opéra Royal de Versailles/Megaron à Athènes, assistant pour les

chorégraphies baroques, Lucinda Childs

2013 – Le Bal Masqué, Verdi – Chorégie D’Orange, danseur assistant, Béatrice Massin

2011 – Atys, Lully – (Reprise)Opéra Comique/BAM/Caen/Versailles, Francine Lancelot

2010 – Le Sacre du Printemps pour le film Chanel et Stravinsky – Dominique Brun

2008 – Hippolyte et Aricie, Rameau -Théatre du Capitole de Toulouse, Nathalie Van Parys

2004 – La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, Offenbach – Théâtre du Châtelet, Laura Scozzi

– Les Boréades, Rameau – Opéra de Lyon, Lionel Hoche

2003 – Les Indes Galantes, Rameau et Guillaume Tell, Rossini – Opéra de Paris, Blanca Li

Benne’s was trained and educated at the Cycle Notation Laban CNSMDP, the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris et Junior Ballet du CNSMDP and the Conservatoire National de Toulouse.  As a choreographer he has created the company, Beaux-Champs/Bruno Benne for the project Figures Non Obligées and in 2012 – Devill’s Dreame’s with Adeline Lerme  and the ensemble Les Witches and in 2011 – Figures Non Obligées(extraits) with Adeline Lerme.  He also danced in Le Rigaudon du Roi, vidéo for Fête de la Danse, Blanca Li and in 2010 – Elégie de Fauré, Solo pour Les Transeuropéennes de Rouen, Jean Manifacier.

photo by Nicolai Spiess

Justin Coates is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and joined the NYBDC in the summer of 2010. He has performed in their American premiere of the first staged production of Jean Philippe Rameau’s Zephyre in New York City and joined them in the groundbreaking production of Teseo (2011) at the International Handel Festival in Goettingen, Germany.  He has also appeared with the NYBDC at the French Festival at Hillwood Estate, Museum, & Gardens. Other Baroque credits include the Boston Early Music Festival production of Dido & Aeneas, as well as The Cunning Man, with choreography by NYBDC’s own Caroline Copeland.  In his other life, as a modern dancer, Justin has had the pleasure of dancing for a number of choreographers and companies, including Kraig Patterson, Mariana Bekerman, VIA Dance Collective, Anabella Lenzu DanceDrama, as well as an apprenticeship with Dusan Tynek Dance Theatre.

Olsi Gjeci

Olsi Gjeci was born in the beautiful city of Vlore in Albania. The son of one of Albania’s premiere folk dance choreographers Guri Gjeci, he began his professional career at fifteen with the prestigious Folkloric Group Laberia, where he rose to be a leader. He later moved on to dance with the National Albanian Folkloric Ensemble. He has performed throughout the world including France, Spain, Israel, Italy, Turkey, Lithuania and Macedonia. In 2006 moved to the United States and began his studies at Hunte rCollege concentrating on Modern Dance and Philosophy.  At Hunter, he has performed works from Mark Morris’ repertoire, Gerald Otte, Nicole Wolcott, and has studied with Vicky Shick, Natalie Desch, and Jennifer Nugent, Kendra Portier,and Barbara Mahler. Currently he is collaborating with Carlos Fittante as he learns Baroque and Balinese dance. He is a member of Balam Dance Theatre and BEMF Dance Ensemble. He first performed with NYBDC 2011. The founder and artistic director of Sublime Dance Company, he choreographs and performs in New York.

SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENTS

Performer, Choreographer and Educator Heather Lipson Bell works nationally and abroad on stage and screen, in both the classroom and the community. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Boston Conservatory. Credits include: New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics; Los Angeles, Dallas, Palm Beach and Boston Lyric Opera companies; Boston and South Dakota Symphony Orchestras; Pasadena Symphony and Pops; the Hollywood Bowl; City Ballet of Los Angeles; Helios Dance Theatre;   La Danserie; Wenta Ballet of Los Angeles; Theatre Bethune; South Bay CLO; Cabrillo Music Theatre and Odyssey Dance Theatre. Film Credits include two Academy Award Winners: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and West Bank Story. Currently she is Co-Artistic Director of Teatro Filarmonico; Workshop Leader/Assistant Director &Choreographer with Los Angeles Opera Education Department; a Movement Specialist for mentally and physically challenged individuals and a Wharton Performance Certified Flexibility Technician.

Katie Gardner has an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and a BA from Kent State University.  In her own words:

“I am a performing artist earning my Master of Fine Arts in Voice Performance from California Institute of the Arts. I have tailored my graduate studies at CalArts to focus entirely on my interdisciplinary work as a vocalist, writer and aerial choreographer. My creative work and academic research is inspired by female voice performance history, circus and sideshow history, embodiment and perception.

I intend to research the role of circus arts in French baroque theater for my doctoral thesis. I am particularly interested in the cultural separation of circus arts performed in the theater and circus arts performed on the streets as well as the cultural meanings associated with inserting circus arts into plays, operas, and ballets of this period. I am in the process of applying to doctoral programs starting in the fall of 2014.

Other research interests include rhythmical entrainment and choreography, ‘the present’ in circus arts and gymnastics, text in music, recontextualized historical performance, and the embodied adaption process from text to libretto to stage.

It is my ambition to perform, write, research and teach at a higher level every year.  My goal is to continue fusing my passions seamlessly while teaching performance studies at a university. I can not imagine dancing without researching it. I can not imagine singing without dancing. I can not imagine choreographing without teaching. I can not imagine writing without putting it on its feet visually. I am proud that I have been able to pursue all of my passions and not limit myself to one metier. “

Jekyns Pelaez has danced with the Diablo Ballet, The Ballet San Jose, the Charlotte Youth Ballet and Ballet Arizona.  As an actor he has often performed with Histrion Theater.  His education and training include The Instituto Columbiano de Ballet Clasico, St. Mary’s College and the Instituto Departmental de Belles Artes. He is also a photographer and plays the piano.

VIDEOGRAPHER

Mariel McEwen received an undergraduate BFA in Dance from the University of Arizona at Tucson in 1978. She concentrated her work in dance history working under the direction of Sandra Noll Hamond, specializing in the dances of the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Three summers were spent working with the 18th century dance historian Wendy Hilton.

She danced in the company of the pioneer modern dancer Eleanor King as she continued her studies at the University of New Mexico and completed a Masters Degree in Theater and Dance with an emphases in dance history and costume design. Under the guidance of Dr. Judith Bennahum she created the Baroque productions of Fetes Gallants and Harlequin’s Garden. After graduating, she was the resident costume designer for the Albuquerque Civic Light Opera from 1981 to 1989.

In 1989 Mariel moved to Los Angeles where she was accepted as a Producing Fellow at the American Film Institute. After graduation she worked with Anne Drecktrah for film production companies such as Jones Inter-Cable and Mitsubishi. During 2004-2006 she worked at Sparkhill creating documentaries for the Warner’s and Paramount Studio for the re-release of classic films such as the Thin Man collection for Warner’s Home Video and a series of documentaries  for seven John Wayne titles for Batjac Productions and Paramount Home Video that included the titles The High and the Mighty, Island in the Sky, Hondo, McLintock and The Track of the Cat.   For more information see her website: http://www.marielmcewan.com/Media/WEB_WELCOME.html