International Summer Academy of Baroque Dance 2015

Karin Modigh comes from Stockholm, Sweden, where she took her first baroque dance steps in her mid-teens. She quickly developed a passion for early dance that has since taken her throughout most of Europe. Today she works professionally as a dancer, choreographer and teacher of baroque and renaissance dance, both within her company Stockholm Baroque Dancers, as well as under her own name. To Karin, baroque dance is a living dance form, just as relevant and fascinating today as it was 300 years ago.

EDUCATION

Karin has a broad training background encompassing classical ballet, contemporary dance, jazz and Swedish folk dance. In early dance, she has primarily studied at the University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm, with Marie-Geneviève Massé and Françoise Denieau in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, France, with Irène Ginger and Béatrice Massin in Paris, and at various courses in the UK and Italy. She has also studied commedia under Barry Grantham and Gino Samil, mime under Ika Nord, as well as musicology, dance and theatre science at Stockholm University.

DANCER AND CHOREOGRAPHER

Karin has performed in dance and opera productions in France, the US, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden with choreographers such as Marie-Geneviève Massé (Compagnie l'Eventail), Françoise Denieau (Fondation Royaumont), Caroline Copeland and Carlos Fittante (Boston Early Music Festival Dance Ensemble), Sigrid T’Hooft (Corpo Barocco), Lieven Baert, Kaj Sylegård, and Bétina Marcolin. She has danced at Casino Théâtre de Bordeaux, Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris, the Drottningholm Theatre and the Royal Palace in Stockholm, Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston, Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, Lucent Danstheater in Den Haag and Palladium in Malmö, among others.

Karin’s work as a choreographer comprises collaborations with Les Paladins/Jerôme Corréas at the Stockholm Early Music Festival, Suzanne Persson (Completely Baroque), and the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theatre. In August 2010 she did her first solo performance, Le Visage Humain, in collaboration with luthenist Magnus Andersson. Both as a dancer and choreographer, she has a penchant for dance theatre, taking her general starting point from baroque or renaissance movement material.

Karin has received grants from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, Nordic Culture Point, the Carina Ari Foundations, and the friends of the University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm.

PEDAGOGUE AND LECTURER

After completing the one-year post-graduate pedagogy programme at the University College of Dance and Circus in 2006, Karin was for five years teaching regular classes in baroque dance at the Ballet Academy of Stockholm and in early dance at the Stockholm School of the Arts. She is now a freelance teacher, being regularly invited to the Stockholm University College of Opera. She has also given classes at the University College of Dance and Circus, the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, at an early dance festival in Moscow, at professional dance education programme in Gothenburg, and at schools and conservatories in Sweden and France.

In addition, Karin has collaborated on productions for Swedish radio and TV, and given lecture demonstrations at the baroque dance seminar in Rothenfels am Main, at the Stockholm City Archives, and at the international symposium La Sallé, held at the 18th-century court theatre Confidencen. In October 2010 she lectured together with Irène Ginger at Colloque Noverre, a research conference at Sorbonne in Paris.

Karin Modigh
www.karinmodigh.eu

Stockholm Baroque Dancers
www.baroquedancers.se

Deda Cristina Colonna graduated in ballet from Istituto Musicale Brera di Novara and Ecole Supérieure d’Etudes Chorégraphiques in Paris. She holds a degree in dance from the Sorbonne, where she specialized in Baroque Dance and Italian/French Renaissance Dance. She graduated from the Acting School of Teatro Stabile di Genova and she worked as a soloist and guest choreographer with The New York Baroque Dance Company. She acted in various productions ranging from Shakespeare to Cechov and Genet, in Italy, France and Germany. She choreographed the dances and the baroque gestures of many operas and ballets, especially of the baroque and classical repertoire, working with directors as Pier Luigi Pizzi, Guido De Monticelli, Antonio Latella. She was Pier Luigi Pizzi’s assistant for numerous productions.

She is the Director of the Dance School of Civico Istituto Brera in Novara. Her research on baroque dance was published in the proceedings of numerous international conferences.

She has recently begun her career as a director-choreographer, mainly staging works from the baroque repertoire such as "Mulier Fortis" by J.B. Staut, "La serva scaltra" by J.A. Hasse , "Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria", "L'Orfeo" and “L’incoronazione di Poppea” by C. Monteverdi, "La liberazione di Ruggero dall'Isola di Alcina" by F. Caccini, "La Diana Schernita" by G. Cornacchioli, "The Fairy Queen" by H. Purcell and “Così fan tutte” by W.A. Mozart.