Symposium Special
7 - 10 June 2020
As we have already done at recent conferences, we will once again be offering in the days before the Symposium itself a top-level dance course with internationally renowned teachers:
Le Carnaval de Venise
Ballroom Scenes from the Opera
An advanced dance seminar
with Caroline Copeland, USA
The last scene of André Campra's 1699 ballet Le Carnaval de Venise takes place at a magnificent ball and contains dances for "serious" and comic maskers. These dances range from an old fashioned suite of branles to the more "courante" chaconne and forlane. In 2017, Ms. Copeland choreographed a production of Campra's ballet for the Boston Early Music Festival (Mise-en-scène by Gilbert Blin). This process included the examination of problems like how to adjust extant choreographies and music to the number of dancers specified in the opera livrets (often 6-8 or more) and raised other questions for the choreographer about the dramatic and techni-cal possibilities for ballroom scenes in baroque opera.
The workshop will explore typical material from dance forms such as branle, courante, bourree, minuet, passepied, and forlane. We will then study and learn Ms. Copeland's choreography for Campra's ballet, discuss questions about possible interpreta-tions and examine feasible choreographic solutions.
Caroline Copeland is an Associate Director of the New York Baroque Dance Company and has performed with the troupe throughout the United States and Europe, most notably at the Drottningholm Theater, the Interna-tional Händel Festspiele Göttingen, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Potsdam Sanssouci Music Festival. Caroline is a featured dancer and choreographer at the Boston Early Music Festival where her choreographic credits include Campra's Le Carnaval de Venise (2017), Handel’s Almira (2013), Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria (2015), and Steffani’s Niobe (2011). As a soloist, Caroline has collaborated with many music/ dance groups around the US and Europe including Nordic Baroque Dancers, The New Dutch Academy, Juilliard415, Cantata Profana, and Mertz Trio. Her choreography has been presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Public Theater, and the Philipszaal in The Hague. She received a MFA in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College and teaches ballet and dance history at Hofstra University.
Prerequisites:
The course is intended for dancers with a good knowledge of Baroque dance. The teaching language is English.
Start: Sunday, 7 June, 2020 at 18:30 with the evening meal. Accommodation check-in from 17:00.
End: Wednesday, 10 May 2020, at 12:15 with lunch.