The New York Baroque Dance Co.

The Baroque Dance Ensemble at Aston Magna Music Festival, 1973
Dancers from left to right: Catherine Turocy, Kristin Draudt, Sue Wanveer, Georgia Burns, Robert Fenwick and Ann Jacoby. Albert Fuller, harpsichord, Stanley Ritchie, violin, Auguste Wessinger, cello

Dr. Shirley S. Wynne pioneered recreations and reconstructions of Baroque dance in the United States as well as bringing these works to the stage.  Her first production of Jean Philippe Rameau’s Pygmalion in 1969 with conductor, Alan Curtis, may have been the first staging in America.  I was fortunate to have studied with Shirley as a student at Ohio State University.  At the recommendation of Ruth Currier, I became one of the younger members of the newly formed company for historical dance at OSU. After being called the Rococo Dance Ensemble, the Court and Country Dance Theater, the group finally settled on a name: The Baroque Dance Ensemble.

As a teacher and artist, Shirley greatly influenced my beginning studies and presentations of historical dance.  This posting contains reviews of her groundbreaking work for Rameau’s La Naissance d’Osiris, also done in collaboration with Alan Curtis.

Thank you Shirley for all the beauty you created in your life and for all those dancers you inspired.

Sincerely,

Catherine Turocy

ARTICLES

Preview article 1972

Debut Review

Review, Alan Kriegsman

Review, George Gelles 1972

Review, Andrew Porter

Castor et Pollux Review, 1973, by George Gelles

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