Caroline Copeland backstage at Drottningholm
The New York Baroque Dance Company provides an important entry into the world of Baroque dance and music for its company dancers. Trained by Catherine Turocy, Artistic Director and Associate Directors Caroline Copeland and Sarah Edgar in period performance technique, the dancers are also encouraged to be involved in projects outside the company. Reading the dance notation, developing their research skills and expanding their knowledge of the general culture from the period are skills the dancers must pursue on their own. These skills are not learned in a dance rehearsal. However, dancers do gain insight into these skills through their NYBDC performances. Being a good dancer does not automatically mean one is equipped to stage direct or choreograph…but it is a start!
This past summer Alexis Silver was the choreographer for the new Aquilon Music Festival in Oregon. She worked on the fully-staged opera premiere of La Chûte de Phaëton, a commedie en musique, from 1694. For a fuller account of the festival and its activities Click here.
Olsi Gjeci taught his first Baroque dance intensive in Lisbon, Portugal on July 30th. Currently he is expanding his research into dance notation, often involving his wife, dancer Diana Seabra as his partner. Olsi is a true “citizen of the world” and is having an incredible impact on dance through his web platform UMUV. An experienced modern dancer (formerly with Trisha Brown) as well as an accomplished modern dance choreographer himself, we are looking forward to Olsi’s deeper journey into the Baroque!
Last April Brynt Beitman choreographed a solo and performed for the City Choir of Washington in their tribute to Maestro Shafer’s fiftieth anniversary as a conductor in Washington, DC. Already a contemporary choreographer, it is exciting to see Brynt’s interest in combining the new with the old.
Looking back, I first met Sarah Edgar as a scholarship student at our summer workshop in Napa in 1998. She has accomplished so much since then. Be sure to catch her work as stage director at the end of September for Handel’s Serse at Haymarket Opera in Chicago.
