Marigny Opera House Dance Company

A church of the arts grows by leaps and bound.

by

Most would admit that there is something a bit unsettling about a shuttered place of worship. Next to the boarded up windows and the “For Sale” signs that mark closed churches and temples, there might as well be other placards that drive the point home, something like “Keep Calm and Commune Somewhere Else.” 

Now imagine such an abandoned place being saved by a new community of people whose common thread is a love of the arts. They gather there to watch and listen as musicians, vocalists, dancers, and actors perform; and collectively, their respect for a sacred space breathes new life into the structure. Its long-gone frescoes, stained glass windows, and ornamentation are barely missed; the bones of the place are beautiful enough.

Not too long ago, Holy Trinity Church in New Orleans’ Faubourg Marigny was an all-but-forgotten site. A Catholic church erected in the mid-nineteenth century to serve the neighborhood’s German population, Holy Trinity witnessed the ups and downs of church attendance for a century and a half before it was officially deconsecrated in 1997. The building, perched on the corner of St. Ferdinand and Dauphine streets, was more or less ignored until the summer of 2011; that’s when Californians Dave Hurlbert and Scott King, looking for investment property in New Orleans, noticed the property’s “For Sale By Owner” sign. They purchased the building without exactly knowing what they would do with it and decided that Hurlbert, who by then had an apartment in the Marigny, would keep an eye on it. 

Hurlbert did much more than keep an eye on it; he soon expelled the termites, got water flowing, heat blowing, and electricity buzzing. Perhaps most importantly, as new owner of the building, he said “yes” when organizers of the acclaimed Fringe Festival, dedicated to theatrical productions in non-traditional venues, asked to use the space as a venue for the 2011 festival. And they couldn’t have found a more gracious host; alongside a career in marketing, Hurlbert was principal pianist for the San Francisco Ballet and founded Goat Hall Productions, a musical theatre company. He wasn’t about to turn down a performing arts request. 

And so began the celebrated second life of this gathering place. Hurlbert renamed the building in time for the festival, choosing Marigny Opera House as the new moniker “in memory of and in honor of the French Opera House,” the venerated cultural institution formerly located in the French Quarter that burned down in 1919. Since the space isn’t as large as traditional, grand opera houses, the name is also a nod to the smaller, more intimate venues that popped up in small towns across the country in the nineteenth century. In their heyday, these small opera houses hosted citizens eager to hear a concert, watch a play, dance, and, at certain times of the year, engage in good old fashioned politicking. (Consider the playhouse in Crowley, Louisiana, named the Grand Opera House of the South.)   

Hurlbert remembers his first Fringe Festival in the Marigny Opera House well. “This place was filled with families, tourists, and neighbors. It makes you so happy it can break your heart, seeing something like that in this old church.”

The experience gave Hurlbert a vision for the building as a resource that should be shared with the community. The Marigny Opera House Foundation was consequently formed with a rather simple mission—to support the work of local performing artists—and the building is now considered a non-denominational “church of the arts,” a designation Hurlbert takes very seriously.

“We believe in the transcendence of art,” Hurlbert said. “For some people, this is their religion.”

Just like the Fringe Festival, other artists and arts organizations soon came knocking. As Hurlbert described it, “We’re often the only venue available to these small companies. I tell them, ‘You get free rehearsal space, plus ticketing and box office services. We’ll print programs and posters, we’ll be the janitors, we’ll set up the risers. What you’re gonna do is your art.’”

That kind of support has attracted the city’s Puppet Festival, classical musicians, small opera and dance companies, theatre troupes, cinephiles, and, of course, enthusiastic audiences who enjoy the shows while surrounded by columned arcades and unadorned plaster walls. Scratch that—the walls are actually adorned by the climbing cracks and crumbles that are somehow atmospheric and remind you that this place was once neglected, but not anymore.

Whether they come for a cultural offering or for the novelty of the venue, or a combination thereof, people come en masse to the Marigny Opera House, a phenomenon at times, even for the management. Spencer Doyle, another California transplant who became the Opera House’s manager in 2013, recalled thinking, Is this real? as young students from across town bought $10 tickets to see an opera. And it sold out.

Another sell-out performance was the December 2013 staging of Claudio Monteverdi’s “Vespers of 1610.” A rarely performed early Baroque masterpiece, the Marigny production featured musicians, vocalists, and contemporary dance; and it was a non-stop, ninety-minute mash-up inside an old, freezing church that had people begging for standing room. Who knew? 

According to Hurlbert, the audience’s response to that combination of live music and dance was a lesson for him, as was the well-received New Dance Festival that Doyle was instrumental in organizing for the Opera House. That event also paired live music and contemporary choreography, and it sold out as well.  

“We couldn’t plan fast enough for the next dance festival,” said Doyle, “so we thought, What about our own dance company?”

One Kickstarter campaign later, the Marigny Opera House Dance Company became a reality with funds in place to pay three local choreographers (Maya Taylor, Donna Crump, and Diogo de Lima), six dancers, and the musicians they’ll partner with for the first season.

“I’m pinching myself that it’s happening,” said Doyle. “There was never a big plan, but always a passion. It just kept progressing to this point.”

The dance company promises three productions in its inaugural season, each premiering original work from the choreographers and each set to live music from some of the city’s top musicians. This is what pulling out all the stops looks like for a new venture.

“In the dance world, you don’t always get the opportunity to perform to live music,” noted choreographer Maya Taylor. By way of Omaha and New York City, she moved to New Orleans in July 2013 and was featured in the New Dance Festival that year.

Taylor explained, “After the New Dance Festival, I started going to everything the Marigny Opera House put on. I really liked the work they were putting out.

“Dave and Spencer eventually asked me to go to coffee to talk about the dance company, and I was like, ‘Yes, you should do it.’”

They later offered her the company’s rehearsal director position. She’s responsible for the dancers that signed contracts after auditioning this summer.

“These are incredible performers and technically [proficient] at the professional level,” said Taylor. “Dance is very independent, internal, so I have to get them to look like a company of dancers as quickly as possible.”

Curtis Thomas is one of the dancers selected to be part of the new venture. A twenty-three-year-old New Orleans native, his extensive training began at the New Orleans Ballet Association’s Center for Dance when he was six.

“I fell in love [with dance] pretty instantly, but I didn’t know it was what I wanted to do or that it was an option.”

Thomas’ enrollment at Benjamin Franklin High School was cut short by Hurricane Katrina, so he packed up and went north to Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding school in New Hampshire, where he continued dancing. In May of this year, Thomas graduated with a B.F.A. in Dance from Boston Conservatory. He was searching for the next step when he noticed a friend’s Facebook post about the Marigny Opera House’s Kickstarter campaign. 

He hadn’t heard of the Marigny Opera House before, and “[p]eople always told me I would never live in New Orleans as a dancer, that work isn’t available. … This was a rare opportunity. I had to go for it.”

When he entered the Opera House to audition, “It was stunning. That’s the first thing that hit me: I would love to be dancing here. And then I got nervous … Auditions were intense, but everyone was really nice. I had done quite a few auditions in New York, and it’s so cutthroat up there, so stressful. There was a similar intensity here in New Orleans, but everyone is kinder.” 

So Thomas is one of the chosen few for the fledgling dance company, and he’s thrilled. (His family is, too. They were able to regroup and recover after Katrina left four feet of water in their home. “There was no way my mama was gonna live anywhere else,” Thomas explained.) He moved home the day before rehearsals began in mid-August.

As a contemporary dancer, Thomas has a solid background in ballet. “I’m interested in going beyond that foundation to discover new ways of moving. The three choreographers have such distinct backgrounds and movement personalities that it will really challenge us to be diverse. I want to be a chameleon.”

He continued, “It’s rare to get new work created on you these days, and with it being such a small company, we’ll get individualized attention and tailoring. It feels like a gift. … Dave and Spencer care so much. You can tell that they are so deeply invested in the Opera House and in New Orleans and in bringing the arts culture there to a new place. This has the potential to skyrocket the city as a place where dance and music can really live and thrive together.”

Thomas’ personal goal for this inaugural season of dance: “Keep expanding and growing as a dancer and a person; the two are so linked. And to keep falling in love with what I do.”

The love fest is alive and well inside the Marigny Opera House. Step inside when the dance company makes it debut in October, and chances are you’ll return religiously.

Details. Details. Details.

Marigny Opera House

725 St. Ferdinand Street

New Orleans, La. 

(504) 948-9998

marignyoperahouse.org

The dates of the Dance Company’s 2014/2015 Inaugural Season are

October 24—26; January 23—25; and April 17—19.