About Catherine Turocy
Dallas, TX
Catherine Turocy (CBA ’19) is one of the leading experts in restaging and reviving the “lost art” of Baroque dance and opera for the stage. She co-founded the New York Baroque Dance Company 40 years ago, and it remains the premiere ensemble of its kind in America. She was decorated by the French Republic as a Chevalier (knight) in the Order of Arts and Letters for her productions of French opera-ballets and intimate dance concerts in North America, Europe and Asia. In 2017, Turocy’s work on Rameau’s Le Temple de la Gloire received three top prizes in the areas of best stage direction for opera, best choreography, and best photography. In March 2018 the work received an IZZIE for best restaging of a ballet. Presently, she is working with Pajarito Environmental Education Center and Planetarium in Los Alamos, New Mexico and will produce a 25-minute, 360 degree dome show, highlighting connections between dance and science, based on research of ballet’s origins with content reaching from the Greeks to the Baroque to the 20th century.
Nijinsky’s Abandoned Saraband
In 1913, Vaslav Nijinsky sent shockwaves with two modernist works for the Ballets Russes: The Rite of Spring and Jeux. But a third work, also from 1913, went unfinished: Nijinsky’s Saraband, set to music of Bach. As a fellow at The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, Turocy’s mission will be the research and a proposed reconstruction of this ballet. Turocy will continue researching Nijinsky’s outline as she consults with experts and CBA alumni Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer, among others, and investigate the influences by Delsarte and Dalcroze on Nijinsky’s process.