The New York Baroque Dance Co.

August 10 and 11, 2024 on Zoom

Four sessions per day over 2 days: August 10 and 11, 2024

Each session will last about 60 – 75 minutes and be conducted in English.

All sessions will be recorded and shared with students for a limited time after the workshop ends.

Time Zone help:

	U.S. Pacific	U.S. Central	U.S. Eastern	London	Paris
Session 1	8:00am	10:00am	11:00am	16:00	17:00
Session 2	9:15am	11:15am	12:15pm	17:15	18:15
Session 3	10:30am	12:30pm	1:30pm	18:30	19:30
Session 4	12:00pm	2:00pm	3:00pm	20:00	21:00

What has been happening in the field of historical dance lately? What are the new discoveries? Who is researching which topics in performance practice? Is it possible to have a class in period expression from period sources? How do performer/researchers make decisions for stage presentation?

All these questions and more will be answered, analyzed, discussed and played with in our summer workshop. Do not miss the opportunity to learn from international experts:

Our Faculty: Caroline Copeland, Edmund Fairfax, Mark Franko, Moira Goff, Hubert Hazebroucq, Mace Perlman, Sreelakshmi Somanath and Catherine Turocy

Class Descriptions ( in progress)

Saturday, August 10

Session 1 • Mace Perlman•  Poetic Speech, Mime, and Pantomime: A Journey of Embodied Words and of the Wordless Body

How does verbal language live in the performer’s body, whether speaking the words of a Shakespearian character or articulating the phrases of a gestural pantomime? How, on the other hand, does a masked actor in silence or a Decroux mime speak a language which is the body’s own, a language not unlike the language of a Michelangelo pietà or a figure from Rodin’s “Gates of Hell”? Two strands of artistic and theatrical expression which have always been intertwined and which we may call the need for words and the need to articulate a language beyond words.

Mace Perlman, commedia player, Shakespearian actor and classically trained mime, will take us on a five-centuries-long journey, drawing on humoral psychology and poetry, both verbal and non-verbal, to tell the story of these two interconnected and interdependent forms of theatrical expression.

 — 15 minute break and check-in for next teacher —

Session 2 • Moira Goff•  Dance and Drama in John Weaver’s The Loves of Mars and Venus

“I will take a fresh look at John Weaver’s The Loves of Mars and Venus, often described as the first modern ballet. Weaver worked on the London stage, where dance was performed alongside and within drama and he drew on rhetorical and acting practices for his gestures. I will explore how dancers might, without words, perform them. Weaver published his own scenario for The Loves of Mars and Venus, which is detailed enough for us to attempt to recreate his first ‘Dramatick Entertainment in Dancing’. I will suggest how he might have used dance and gesture to create some of the scenes in his ballet. This will mainly be a lecture presentation but there will be a chance to experiment with a dancer’s approach to early eighteenth-century gestures.”

 — 15 minute break and check-in for next teacher —

Session 3 • Mark Franko • Noverre and the Performance of the Passions in Agamemnon Vengé
“In 2010 Claudia Jeschke invited me to work with composer Franz Aspelmayr’s piano reduction score of Jean-Georges Noverre’s action ballet Agamemnon Avenged (1771), which dance scholar and Noverre specialist Sibylle Dahms had discovered in a Prague library. Probably used for rehearsal, the score had handwriting in the margin paraphrasing the narrative of Noverre’s libretto. While this did not itself render choreography, it gave new life to the possibility of a reenactment. Collating the score with the program one could see what music was devoted to which action and what the duration of each action was. Each scene was an action defined by its own musical character. With this material I worked with students of the Paris Londron University of Salzburg and of the Institute of Dance of the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz for a showing in the Mozarteum in Salzburg.

Last spring I returned to this work by staging selected scenes with a remarkable group of collaborators at Temple University: music faculty Joyce Lindorff at the fortepiano, Spanish Fulbright scholar Mayte Olmedilla, Baroque dance expert Jennifer Meller, performer and artistic advisor Hubert Hazebroucq, and my Ph.D students.

I shall discuss how I understood Noverre’s goals for this ballet and how my interpretation of these goals as well as the contributions of my collaborators shaped the mise en scene. My thinking is connected to Noverre scholarship, to Noverre’s writings, and to current collaboration with Argentinian Noverre expert Juan Ignacio Vallejos.  The historical materials that I encountered in that first workshop remain the basis for this performative research into selected scenes. The performance video will help to illustrate some of my ideas on how to realize one performance which I believe stood out as radical, and to describe the process with my collaborators.”

— 15 minute break and check-in for next teacher —

Session 4 • Caroline Copeland • Charles Le Brun Class in Expression

This class is inspired by Charles Le Brun’s “Conference on Expression” and eyewitness accounts of David Garrick’s ability to transform his expressions from one passion to the next quickly and seamlessly, only with the face.  Using Le Brun’s drawings as a guide, the students will embody hope, fear, astonishment and jealousy all in time to music considering how each transformation ebbs and flows in space while using the breath for punctuation and effect. This popular parlour trick and fairground entertainment is a useful skill to develop as an 17th and 18th century theatrical performers where artists are asked to embody a variety of characters and passions.

Sunday, August 11

Session 1 • Hubert Hazebroucq • “Danses caractérisées” to Pantomimes, modalities of expressiveness in the late 17th Century“

The phrase “danse caractérisée” was at the time usually used for the expressive dances, which could imitate the things and persons, characters or passions, activities, behaviours or distinctive features. But how are they related to “action” or plots ? How did these danses caractérisées prepare the way to pantomime, and to what extent can we distinguish these practices ? The lecture will also explore the use of the terms of Pantomimes for the ballet in the second half of the 17th C. What did that word designate on stage, before the development of “ballets pantomimes” ? To which  specific kind of expressiveness was it related ? More generally, these questions have a practical perspective, as they aim to define different shades and techniques of expressiveness, involving danced  or not danced movements, dance steps or fixed postures, theatrical or symbolic gestures…

— 15 minute break and check-in for next teacher —

Session 2 • Catherine Turocy • Pygmalion’s Statue

This movement class will use the sung text of La Statue from Jean Philippe Rameau’s ballet, Pygmalion, with the libretto by Sylvain Ballot de Sauvot (1703 – December 1760) who was an 18th-century French lawyer at Parlement of Paris and man of letters, belonging to Rameau’s entourage. The interpretation of the text will serve as a basis for making a pantomime of the statue coming to life. The poetry gives many clues and the music inspires the movement. Through this exercise Catherine will explain her methodology, making references to Noverre and Gallini, as well as using examples of sculpture and painting to inform the pose/attitudes. Wear comfortable clothing!

— 15 minute break and check-in for next teacher —

Session 3 • Sreelakshmi Somanath  • Bharatanatyam

An introduction to the expressive art of Bharatanatyam through its intricate mudras (hand gestures) and captivating abhinaya (facial expressions). In this class, Sreelakshmi will guide you through the essential mudras used to convey emotions, stories, and symbolism in this classical Indian dance form. You will also learn how facial expressions complement these gestures to enhance storytelling and emotional depth, creating a rich and immersive experience.

— 15 minute break and check-in for next teacher —

Session 4 • Edmund Fairfax • Pantomime Ballet at the Paris Opéra 1776-1799.

 Edmund will provide an introduction to the twenty-five or so pantomime ballets which were mounted at the Paris Opéra in the late eighteenth century, an institution widely regarded in its day as the hotspot for fine performances by the leading dancers of the time; as well as a locus for the performance of sophisticated ballets, created by such greats as Noverre, the Gardel brothers, and a few others. This introduction will examine what these works looked and sounded like, as far as that can be recovered: specifically, the nature of the scenarios and scores, as well as the characteristic features of the pantomime and choreography (with many visuals, digital reconstructions and samples of music). What emerges is a “ghost” corpus of very sophisticated works, even “lost classics” in some cases, which have been largely ignored or only superficially treated in ballet history.

Wrap-up following Session 4

Please join us as we say goodbye to our presenters and each other, get our outstanding questions answered, and share our final thoughts and takeaways from the workshop.

Tuition is only $35 and acts as an entrance fee to all presentations. The NYBDC works to keep the tuition low so money is not a barrier, and, at the same time, with a healthy volume of students we are able to pay our presenters and cover the workshop production expenses.

Contact Jennifer Meller at jenbeast@gmail.com with any questions.

Registration/Payment : Once payment has been made registration is assured and you will receive future emails concerning the workshop.