The Arthropologist

Going for Baroque: New York Baroque Dance Company teams with Ars Lyrica forseason finale

Antoine Plante conducting Mercury Baroque with Catherine Turocy on stage
Photo by Amitava Sarkar
Catherine Turocy in Drott
Photo by Jason Melms
Catherine Turocy
Photo by Juan Garcia
An artist of the New York Baroque Dance Company in the "Garland Dance, Act II"of Armide
Photo by Louis Forget
Shepherds and nymphs in the New York Baroque Dance Company's production ofArmide
Photo by Louis Forget

The first time I watched The New York Baroque Dance Company I was blown away. And it was on YouTube! Even on my rickety vintage laptop, I could feel the ancient air moving past my eyes. It was as if history had been brought to life, but without the dust of a Masterpiece Theater experience. The dances seemed fresh and newly re-imagined. I felt my art form being pulled through time. It was the stuff of chills. And so it's no wonder that Catherine Turocy, founder and artistic director of New York Baroque Dance Company, is a leading authority on baroque dance, the very roots of ballet.

At the time, I was working on a story about the company's appearance with Mercury (formerly Mercury Baroque). I couldn't wait to see the program. If the company was that good on a tiny screen, I knew it would be a powerhouse show. But then the weather gods interfered, I got stuck in New York with a bad case of the Jet Blues and missed the performance.

I missed out, but, another, more important connection was made. Matthew Dirst, artistic director of Ars Lyrica, happened to be playing the harpsichord for that show. He met Turocy, and at some point, one said to the other, "We should do something together."

Turocy operates a bit like a detective, culling from numerous sources, putting pieces together, from writings, sculpture, architecture, musical notes and published works.

Many years later, here we are at Ars Lyrica's season finale, Heaven and Hell, on Friday and Sunday, featuring the New York Baroque Dance Company performing Claudio Monteverdi's Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda Ballo delle Ingrate and other works from his 1638 Madrigals of Love and War at The Hobby Center's Zilkha Hall.

Talk about being worth the wait.

Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda is an operatic scene set for three voices, with a libretto drawn from Torquato Tasso's La Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, Canto XII).

Setting the scene

Turocy sets the scene. "It's a romance, set against the backdrop of the First Crusade, that was first performed during the 1624 carnival in the palazzo of the Venetian nobleman Girolamo Mocenigo. Testo, the narrator, tells the story of Tancredi, a Christian knight, who challenges a Saracen opponent to single combat.

"After a bloody encounter, the Saracen falls mortally wounded and asks to be baptized. Shocked, Tancredi realizes he has been fighting the maiden Clorinda. Monteverdi himself includes a description of the production with the musical score, and this forms the basis of my stage direction. His descriptions of the combat, graphically illustrated in the music, are matched by the actions of the dancers, who are the doubles of the singing Tancredi and Clorinda."

At first, it might boggle the mind how anyone reconstructs a dance from the 17th Century, especially given that Feuillet notation, a system devised at the behest of King Louis XIV of France by the dancing master Pierre Beauchamp and refined by the dancing master Raoul Auger Feuillet, didn't arrive until the18th Century.

Monteverdi madrigals are the very earliest dances that her troupe performs. "Monteverdi is the very beginning of the Baroque," she says. "He was cutting edge at the time, openly moving away from the Church. He also wrote the first opera."

Turocy puts me at ease; she doesn't have to be a time traveler after all. She had other sources, lots of them, including the detailed instructions of Monteverdi himself. And then, there's help from an early dance writer, Cesare Negri, who penned Le Grazie d'Amore, the first text on ballet theory, which was republished in 1604 as Nuove lnventioni di Balli (New Inventions of the Dance). John Bulwer's 1644 The Natural Language of the Hand was another trusted source.

The spark begins

Shirley Wynne at Ohio State University first sparked Turocy's interest in historical dance during her college years. She also studied Renaissance dance with Julia Sutton, Charles Garth and Elizabeth Aldrich, and performed briefly in the Court Dance Company of New York, directed by Charles Garth and Elizabeth Aldrich. Like most young choreographers, Turocy was also deeply involved in creating her own contemporary work. But in 1976, she reached a decision.

"What does dance need?" she asked. "Does the field really need another contemporary company?"

At the time, there was no professional Baroque dance company. Fast forward to today, where we find Turocy and her company to be the go-to organization for Baroque dances in opera and early music concert settings. She has been decorated by the French Republic as a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters, and has received a Bessie Award for sustained achievement in choreography, as well as the Natalie Skelton Award for Artistic Excellence.

Turocy operates a bit like a detective, culling from numerous sources, putting pieces together from writings, sculpture, architecture, musical notes and published works, looking for available clues anywhere she can find them. From the shape of a hand in a Bernini sculpture to a note in a score, it all can factor into what we will see. It's like a great puzzle, where the past can be intelligently re-constructed from the pieces left behind. She also reminds me that people have been reviving these dances for a long time, so earlier re-creations inform her process.

Her dancers are a mix of those with training in ballet, modern and historical dance. All have been intensely immersed in the historical vocabulary.

"The biggest difference is that Baroque dancers use more of the releve than traditional ballet. That's often the hardest part. So instead of just demi pointe, we use all the places in between," she says. "The Baroque port de bra (arm movement) is similar to ballet, but does differ in some respects." In the Monteverdi dances, the arm movements communicate the drama.

Well known for both her impeccable scholarship and dazzling theatricality, Turocy sees herself as part of a long lineage of those interested in dance history. She makes no claim to be presenting the dance exactly as it was first experienced. It's really a much more creative process.

"It's a re-creation from the evidence that one has," she says. "I feel free to embody the style from the dramatic text. My job is to illuminate the text. I never feel restricted. The more I look at the text, the more details emerge. Dance is written right into the text, not so much the dance steps themselves, but the dramatic action. It's endlessly exciting."

Thomas Baird in Raoul Auger Feuillet's choreography (1700) for the Entrée d'Apollon, from Lully's Le Triomphe de l'Amour (1681).

Passacaille d'Armide danced and reconstructed by Catherine Turocy, artistic director of The New York Baroque Dance Company

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super duper

Quirky Houston DJ drops genre-blending mix CD inspired by video games

Photo by Dustee Torres

DJ Squincy Jones

If you’re the type of person who has dubstep, Southern hip-hop, and Koji Kondo’s iconic “Ground Theme” from Super Mario Bros. in your streaming-music library, then Squincy Jones has created the perfect playlist for you..

Photo by Dustee Torres

DJ Squincy Jones

Super Nintendub is the name of the mix where the Houston-born-and-bred DJ mashes up all those aforementioned music genres. A capella bars from Houston heavyweights (Megan Thee Stallion, Paul Wall) and other Dirty South MCs (Three 6 Mafia, 8Ball & MJG) gets laid over grooves from underground dubstep artists (Numa Crew, Blay Vision, Hamdi). But we also get music from various Nintendo (Castlevania III, Ninja Gaiden) and Super Nintendo (Super Mario World, Final Fantasy VI) games. Jones also throws in audio samples from commercials and gaming-heavy movies like WarGames, The Wizard, and the Adam Sandler-produced Grandma’s Boy.

Needless to say, Jones has always been a gamer. He’s had his run of game systems: NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, even the old-school Atari 2600. He recalls his days blowing the dust out of such cartridges as Contra, Double Dragon, and Duck Hunt. In the past, Jones has released a series of mashup mixes – titled Blend Pack – with cover art that resembles/salutes classic video games.

“I'm a huge fan of all the eight-bit and 16-bit stuff,” says Jones (government name: Shane Rector), 41. “I play a lot of the new games, or I have played a lot of the new games, but not as much anymore. You know, being a parent and having a full-time job – you don't really have time for video games anymore.”

Super Nintendub is a sequel to Nintendub, a dubstep mix he played during a party way back in 2008. “I added some a capellas, [like] a Bun B a capella,” he recalls. “I had some other Dirty South tunes from the time. I layered them because they're at the same tempo as dubstep. Another friend that does music gave me a folder of Nintendo songs. So, I just randomly layered it on top and kinda slowed down the Nintendo music, and it sounded cool as hell to me.”

The mix picked up fans overseas when he dropped it online. “I've always wanted to make a follow-up to it because I got so much good feedback,” he remembers. “People from all over were writing about it."

Jones decided to release Super on compact disc, sold in rectangular keep cases – packaging that’s very familiar to gamers – with double-sided artwork also by Jones. (A digital link is available upon request to those who buy the CD.) While the limited-edition disc is available for purchase on Jones’s Bandcamp page, the CD mix shouldn’t be confused with the Super mix that’s currently playing on the page.

“I wanted to have them in the mix as well,” he says. “But I'm not entirely, you know, confident with my production skills. So, I just kinda had it on the side to go along with the release of this mix.”

Since releasing Super in September, Jones says he’s gotten good feedback from those who’ve bought a copy. “Because it looks like a video game,” he says, “a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, cool! Is it an actual game or an actual DVD or whatnot?’ But it's always hit or miss because some people are like, ‘Oh, man, I don't have a CD player’ or "Wow, you actually printed a CD,’ because everything's, you know, digital.”

He’s looking into playing a big-screen version of Super, where videos of the rap songs are spliced in with video-game footage and other retro clips, somewhere around here. “I was thinking like either a movie theater or somebody mentioned Aurora Picture Show, or maybe Wonky Power, to do like a viewing or showing or whatever – kind of have a party for it.”

Even though Jones enjoys merging gaming and music – his dual obsessions – he still prefers to be known as more than a video-game DJ. A veteran of the Houston DJ scene for a quarter of a century, he continues to do gigs like his upcoming monthly residency at Eight Row Flint.

“I do open-format DJing,” he says. “I've done raves and dubstep parties. I've played on the radio. I've played at Mid Main, where it’s a mainstream crowd. In this day and age, everybody has their branding or whatnot. I just love video games, so I just kind of take that as my branding, I guess.”

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