The New York Baroque Dance Co.

November 18, 2026 International Gathering

The Baroque Body and HMA Forum under the Grand Challenge Initiative

Hosted and zoomed from George Mason University ZOOM LINK WILL APPEAR HERE ON NOVEMBER 17TH

10-12: The Baroque Body. Catherine Turocy with dancer Irenie Melin-Gompper as demonstrator and June Huang on Baroque violin presents a lecture/demonstration: The Baroque Body. Unique to this presentation is the motion capture suit Irenie will be wearing for the event. Supported by the Historical Movement Archive whose purpose is to digitally document master teachers and their approach to teaching historical practices, the viewers in the zoom will gain a first- hand experience of new technology and technology in development to be used in research and in the classroom.

Working as an active dancer, choreographer and stage director as well as directing The New York Baroque Dance Company for fifty years, Ms. Turocy has developed methods for training today’s dancer in period performance practice. Derived from her research in period writings of aesthetics in the visual arts as well as looking into aesthetic philosophy  from DaVinci, Descartes, Voltaire and Diderot, Ms. Turocy inspires dancers to explore the “movement of the soul,” the basis of performance practice and poetic gesture. Turocy will lead Irenie through embodiment exercises she has developed in her 50 years of working with performers.  Principles of art and expression are our legacy from the Baroque.  One can use these principles in historical practices and can adapt them to today’s performance practice as they are rooted in traditional Western culture. Can new technology capture “the movement of the soul?”

The presentation, partially funded by The Ohio State University, will be followed by a Q&A.

12-1: Lunch Break

1-2:30:  A Gutenberg Moment for Movement Research. Brad Alan Waller, founder of the Historical Movement Archive, offers a first look at the Rig. It is a Motion Capture system that is in development at George Mason University that uses a camera array that will capture master teachers of Historical Dance, Historical Martial Arts and Cultural Movement without suits or markers. Their knowledge will be preserved in an encyclopedic movement archive, studied with AI, and built to grow into quantum computing.

2:30-3:  Break and re-testing of the equipment

3-5: Movement artists from Historical Dance, Historical Martial Arts and Cultural Movement meet George Mason researchers in engineering, computing, AI and quantum science, with Dean Rick Davis of CVPA. Together they ask how the knowledge carried in the body can be recorded, studied and shared, faithfully and for generations. Movement knowledge can now live in two places that rarely meet. Master teachers carry it in the body: the timing of a step, the weight of a blade, the carriage of a procession. Engineers, computer scientists and researchers in AI and quantum computing build the instruments that can now record, study and share that knowledge. This Forum brings the two together in one room.