Thomas Baird
Lecturer of Dance; Lecturer of Music
Thomas Baird is a historical dance specialist and the co-director of Apollo’s Banquet, a New York City–based Baroque dance and music ensemble.
He is a regular guest lecturer on Baroque dance at the Juilliard School, Mannes School of Music, and Manhattan School of Music. Baird is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, having received his training from the Balance Arts Center in New York City. He teaches the Alexander Technique in the Dance Division of the Juilliard School and in the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College.
He is also a lecturer in voice/opera studies in the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College, where he teaches movement styles for singers and choreographs the annual opera productions.
Through the auspices of Victoria Geduld’s Historic Dance Theatre, Baird presents historical dance in its appropriate context in workshops and lecture demonstrations at Kaatsbaan, American Ballet Theatre’s Summer Ballet Intensive. He was the period movement coach for the Broadway productions of O’Neill’s A Touch of the Poet and, at Lincoln Center Theater, Sheridan’s The Rivals.
He choreographed period dances for Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Placido Domingo at the Metropolitan Opera. For the past five seasons, he has choreographed and performed period dances for the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts at Avery Fisher Hall. Baird is currently on the faculty of the Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet, where he teaches period dance.