About the Performers

Camilla Finlay (dancer) holds a BFA in dance from the Boston Conservatory. She is a member of Digby Dance Company, and has performed Digby's work in evening-length programs and at First Night Boston 2002. Ms. Finlay has also been a guest dancer for Renaissonics, performing with dancer Charles Garth. In addition to performances with the Ken Pierce Baroque Dance Company, she has taken part in graduate performances and operas at Harvard and at the Longy School of Music, most recently in Jacquet de la Guerre's Cephale et Procris.

Marc Molomot (Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, an Egyptien, a Bohémienne) is developing an international career as a concert and opera singer, with a special affinity for baroque music. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music and a Master of Music degree from Manhattan School of Music. In the US he has appeared as a soloist with the New York Collegium, Concert Royal, Apollo's Fire, Philharmonia Baroque, Boston Baroque, the Oratorio Society of New York, the San Francisco Opera, the New York City Opera, and the New York Philharmonic. Most recently, he has been singing in Rameau's Indes Galantes at the Paris Opera with Les Arts Florissants.

The Ken Pierce Baroque Dance Company, founded in Boston in 1987, has received high praise for its performances of historical dance reconstructions and original choreographies in late Renaissance, Baroque, and early 19th-century dance styles. Credits include appearances with the Toronto Consort, Tafelmusik, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, the Clarion Music Society, the Ensemble for Early Music, Pomerium Musices, Concerto Palatino, the Boston Shawm and Sackbut Ensemble, The King's Noyse, the Boston Museum Trio, Charivary, Benefit Street, and many others among the Boston area's distinguished musicians and ensembles. The company has appeared at the Bard Festival, the Holland Early Music Festival (Utrecht), and the Boston Early Music Festival, and company members have performed at early music festivals from Vancouver to Copenhagen.

Ken Pierce, company director and choreographer, has specialized in early dance for over twenty years. In addition to works for the company, choreographies include dances for les Élémens and les Festes d'Hébé for Boston's Handel & Haydn Society; les Caractères de la Danse, commissioned for the 1996 Copenhagen Early Music Festival; the masque Oberon, at Case Western Reserve University; and le Mariage de la Grosse Cathos at the Amherst Early Music Festival. In 1985, he served as assistant choreographer for Quelques pas graves de Baptiste, Francine Lancelot's baroque-style piece for the Paris Opera Ballet, whose cast included Rudolph Nureyev. Mr. Pierce directs the early dance program at the Longy School of Music, and has taught early dance at workshops in Europe, Canada, and the United States.

Rebecca Plack (Musicienne Italienne, la Galanterie) was an inaugural member of Will Crutchfield's Handel Project at the Manhattan School of Music, and most recently performed the title roles in Handel's Semele and Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She has given solo recitals at the Aterforum Festival in Ferrara, Italy, and in October will sing a program of Schubert, Mendelssohn and Liszt in recital at the International Great Romantics Festival in Hamilton, Ontario. Ms. Plack is also a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at Cornell University; her dissertation focuses on early recordings of German Lieder.

Bruce Roberts (dancer) began studying renaissance and baroque dance some twenty years ago. He performs with the Cambridge Court Dancers, a group dedicated to the reconstruction of 15th- and 16th-century court dances, and with Les Menus Plaisirs, which specializes in early eighteenth-century court dance. He has studied baroque dance with Wendy Hilton, Margaret Daniels, and Ken Pierce, and has performed throughout the United States and in Canada, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

Dean Robinson (Monsieur Jourdain), an actor and director from California, is a founding member of the critically acclaimed Actors' Gang. Previous brushes with Molière include Beth Milles' award winning production of The Imaginary Invalid.

Paul Shipper (a Spaniard, Barbacola, the Drawling Lawyer, a Doctor, the Mufti) has performed and/or recorded over twenty bass roles in the baroque opera literature. He has appeared at most of the world's leading music festivals, including Cracow, Edinburgh, Hong Kong, Spoleto, Ravinia, Utrecht, and Boston. As a singer, lutenist, and recorder player, he is a member of New York's Ensemble for Early Music, Nottingham Fair, the Mannes Camerata, the New York Alta Band, and a founding member of Ex Umbris. He has also performed and recorded with Pomerium, the Baltimore Consort, the Smithsonian Chamber Players and others. He lives in New York City.

Melinda Sullivan (dancer) dances and teaches in Boston. She created the Movement for Singers program at New England Conservatory, where she has taught since 1987. Ms. Sullivan discovered baroque and renaissance dance through Ingrid Brainard and Ken Pierce, with whom she now dances. Previously she toured extensively in contemporary dance as soloist with Beth Soll & Company. In early 2003 she produced the Handel & Haydn Society/ Boston Conservatory collaboration of les Élémens (Destouches) and les Festes d'Hébé (Rameau). In June 2003 she returned to Boston Early Music Festival as ballet mistress and soloist for Conradi's Ariadne. Ms Sullivan also teaches baroque dance at the Boston Conservatory.