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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HOWDY, DOCTORS

Grey's Anatomy spins off new medical drama led by Houston-born showrunner

Photo via Meg Marinis/Instagram

Showrunner Meg Marinis poses with actor Kevin McKidd, who recently exited Grey's Anatomy after more than a decade playing Dr. Owen Hunt.

ABC is bringing the Grey's Anatomy universe to Texas with a new one-hour rural medical drama co-created by longtime showrunner Meg Marinis. Marinis was born in Houston and is an alum of both the Kinkaid School and the University of Texas at Austin.

According to an exclusive report from Deadline, which production company Shondaland shared on social media, the untitled series has received a straight-to-series order from ABC and will follow a team at a rural West Texas medical center described as “the last chance for care before miles of nowhere.”

The series marks the first Grey’s Anatomy franchise show set outside the West Coast, and it's the first that's not centered around an existing main character from the original series.

The new drama will be co-created by Shonda Rhimes and Marinis, who has spent nearly two decades working on Grey’s Anatomy. She joined the series during its third season as a production assistant before rising through the ranks to become a researcher, writer, executive producer, and now showrunner.

"This opportunity will bring new characters and stories to life that will embody the same heart, emotion, and connection audiences have loved from Grey’s for more than two decades, all set in my home state of Texas,” Marinis said in a statement announcing the series. "I am so grateful to Shonda Rhimes for creating this dynamic world and feel so fortunate that I get to be a part of it.”

Marinis’ path to running one of television’s biggest franchises started in Austin. In an interview with Shondaland last year, she recounted moving to Los Angeles during her final semester at UT through the university’s UTLA entertainment program, which allows students to complete coursework while interning in the industry. While finishing school, she interned at Universal before landing a production assistant role on Grey’s Anatomy in 2006.

Marinis has also woven Texas experiences into the flagship series itself in recent years. According to Deadline, she personally knew families affected by the Camp Mystic tragedy and rewrote part of a recent Grey’s Anatomy episode after becoming emotional while working on the script.

The West Texas setting is particularly timely, as rural healthcare access remains a growing issue across the state. According to the Texas Hospital Association, more than 20 rural Texas hospitals have closed since 2010, while roughly a quarter of the state’s remaining rural hospitals are considered at risk of closure.

By centering the new series on what ABC describes as “the last chance for care before miles of nowhere,” the franchise could bring national attention to healthcare access challenges facing communities across West Texas and other rural parts of the state.

The new series joins a long lineage of Texas-set television dramas, though not all were actually filmed in the state. Grey’s Anatomy itself is famously set in Seattle while primarily filmed in the Los Angeles area. Friday Night Lights became closely associated with Austin through extensive local filming, while series like Dallas often recreated Texas from California sound stages, with exteriors of Southfork Ranch serving as the Ewings' fictitious home. Walker, Texas Ranger, meanwhile, became one of the best-known examples of a network drama heavily filmed across Texas itself.

Even after more than 20 years on the air, Grey’s Anatomy remains one of television’s most durable franchises. According to ABC, the drama is now the longest-running primetime medical drama in television history and continues to rank among the network’s strongest scripted performers.

Ellen Pompeo, who stars as Dr. Meredith Grey in the original series, is attached as an executive producer, and the new drama is expected to premiere in 2027.

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