The New York Baroque Dance Co.

Goals: Historically, dances of the theater shared a basic dance vocabulary with the ballroom and country dances. We hope to draw students from the vintage ballroom enthusiasts as well as professional ballet, modern and musical theater dancers to create an atmosphere of discovery and exchange. By offering social and country dances at the workshop the theatrical dance students will be able to experience the rhythms and geometry of these forms. The vintage dance students will be able to see the popular dance forms abstracted into ballet. The mixing of enthusiastic and dedicated social dancers with dancers whose training is focused in theatrical forms creates a fertile ground of self-discovery. Dances of the past are a touchstone for today’s dancers, inspiring them in their performances, creations and teaching. The workshop offers a rare opportunity of synergy between historical periods and popular and theatrical dance styles.

Faculty

Richard Powers Instructor and dance historian, Stanford University Dance Division, Department of Drama

• Principal focus since 1975 has been social dance forms from the Renaissance to today. Specializations include currently evolving vernacular dance forms, 19th century American and European social dance, dances of the Ragtime Era and Jazz Age.
• Resources: Research is drawn from a personal collection of over one thousand historic dance manuals, one of the largest personal collections in the world, supplemented with a twelve thousand-title collection of period dance music. Other resources include ongoing exchanges of information with dance historians in the U.S and Europe.
• Studied historic dance with Ingrid Brainard, Elizabeth Aldrich, Julia Sutton, Shirley Wynne, Angene Feves, Wendy Hilton, Catherine Turocy, Elaine Biagi Turner, Ann Jacoby, Charles Garth, Frantisek Bonus, Yvonne Vart, Michelle Nadal, Frankie Manning, Norma Miller and Juan Carlos Copes.
• Founded the Clifton Court Dancers (1976, Renaissance and Baroque dance). Founded the Flying Cloud Academy of Vintage Dance (1981, 19th and 20th Century dance). Formed the Flying Cloud Troupe, a 30-member performing company (1982) and co-founded the supporting Fleeting Moments Waltz & Quickstep Orchestra. Founded the 70-member Stanford Vintage Dance Ensemble (1992-2002).
• Choreographed and directed the 19th century ballroom dances for the Warner Bros./ABC film North and South (1985). Choreographed the Victorian ballroom dances for the public television film Mrs. Perkins’ Ball (1986). Trained the dancers for the Tri-Star film Glory (1989). Choreographed ragtime dance for Faye Dunaway and Richard Widmark in Cold Sassy Tree (1989). Choreographed the dances for the CBS film Spring Awakenings (1994).
• Numerous stage choreographies include Bill Irwin’s Scapin (off Broadway, 1997), dance historian for the Tony Award-winning musical Titanic (Broadway, 1997), choreographies for Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Shakespeare’s King Henry VIII, Massenet’s Cendrillon, Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana, Monteverdi’s Madrigals of Love and War and Orfeo, Berlioz’s Beatrice and Benedict, Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes, and choreographies for the Pacific Northwest Ballet.
• History Consultant for Ian Whitcomb’s Grammy Award-winning album Titanic and other CDs.
• Awarded the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for distinctive and exceptional contributions to education at Stanford University. (1999).
• Selected by the Centennial Issue of Stanford Magazine as one of Stanford University’s most notable graduates, noted primarily for the creation of a new field in historic dance (1992).
• Recipient of the Post-Corbett Award, Cincinnati’s foremost arts recognition (1992).
• Historic dance performances 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.
• Workshops of period dance have been sponsored by the Accademia Nazionale di Danza in Rome; University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music; the Historical Dance Workshop at Goucher College; Lincoln Center, N.Y.; the National Endowment for the Humanities; The Fine Arts Fund; American Studies Association; The Omega Institute; Early Dance Circle, London; Goethe House New York; AMAN Ethnic Dance Theatre, Los Angeles; Sano Dance Center, Tokyo; Arts et Mouvement, Paris; ZigZag Steps, Paris; the City of Kharkiv, Ukraine.

Catherine Turocy, Artistic Director, and co-founder of The New York Baroque Dance Company (NYBDC) in 1976, specializes in producing 17th and 18th century programs ranging from street performances to fully staged operas. There are over 55 operas in the company’s repertoire as well as reconstructed dances and ballets choreographed in period style. Through residencies at educational institutions serving grades k-12 and at the university level, Turocy and dancers of the company instruct professionals and the general public, thus preserving our cultural heritage.

• Turocy, recognized as today’s leading choreographer/reconstructor in the field of 18th century dance, has been decorated by the French Republic as a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters and has received the prestigious BESSIE Award in New York City for sustained achievement in choreography as well as the Natalie Skelton Award for Artistic Excellence. NEA Exchange Fellowships supported extended visits where she lived in London and Paris, conducting research and interacting with other artists. A founding member of the Society for Dance History Scholars, Ms. Turocy lectures on period performance practices and has contributed chapters to dance history text books, articles to Opera News 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.
• Groundbreaking productions over the past three decades include the premiere of Jean Philippe Rameau’s Les Boreades (not performed in the 18th century because of Rameau’s death) and Hippolyte et Aricie, both at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and the Opera de Lyon; Henry Purcell’s Indian Queen performed at the Barbican in London; the award winning Scylla et Glaucus by Jean Marie Leclair performed at the Opera de Lyon as well as over 100 performances of a double bill with Rameau’s Pygmalion and George Frederick Handel’s Terpsicore. Choreography and stage direction commissioned by the Handel Festival in Goettingen, Germany include Handel’s Terpsicore, Ariodante, Arianna, Alcina, Atalanta, Orlando, and in 2011, Teseo.
• Her company has toured North America, Europe and Japan with conductors James Richman, John Eliot Gardiner, Christopher Hogwood, Nicholas McGegan and Wolfgang Katschner. In their home base of New York City, the company produces concerts annually with Concert Royal directed by James Richman. They also perform regularly with Opera Lafayette Orchestra and Chorus directed by Conductor Ryan Brown. Across the United States the company appears with The Dallas Bach Society, Mercury Baroque, Apollo’s Fire and Philharmonia Baroque.
• Catherine Turocy began her studies of historical dance as a freshman at Ohio State University with Dr. Shirley Wynne. She is grateful to Lynn Dally, Peter Saul, Kathryn Karipedes, Ruth Currier, Lucy Venable and Alex Martin for their instruction and guidance.
• Currently Ms. Turocy teaches in the early music programs at Juilliard, Oberlin College and Indiana University and is a member of the Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS), Committee on Research in Dance (CORD), CORPS de Ballet International, the Dance Council and Dance Theater Workshop.

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 Harvard College.  A recipient of the prestigious United States-France Exchange Fellowship from the NEA, he was knighted by the French government in theOrdre 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’sTerpsichore; Rameau’s Pygmalion & L’Impatience, and Rameau’s Zephyre & Clerambault’s Triomphe de la Paix.