Company XIV's Austin McCormick Choreographs Jennifer Nettles' Giulia

Austin McCormick, founder of the Brooklyn-based Company XIV, will choreograph Giulia: The Poison Queen of Palermo, a musical written by and starring Grammy Award–winning singer Jennifer Nettles, starting performances June 28 at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in New York City. Tony Award winner Mary Zimmerman directs.

The musical is based on the true story of a 17th-century Palermo woman said to have poisoned her husband and supplied the concoction for a few others. McCormick, 20 years into running Company XIV, brings to the project a career built on deliberately crossing genres.

He trained at the HARID Conservatory and the Conservatory of Baroque Dance Theater before earning a BFA from The Juilliard School. Alongside those classical foundations, he drew on burlesque, circus arts, magic and what he calls "bacchanalian revelry." Finding no preexisting career lane for that combination, he created his own: Company XIV, an immersive, multi-genre, erotic cabaret show based in Brooklyn since 2006. The company now has its own theater, Drama Desk and Bessie award nominations, and a reputation for artistry delivered through spectacle.

That success led to choreography work in theater and opera, including Rusalka and Samson et Dalila at the Metropolitan Opera and La Traviata for Lyric Opera of Chicago.

"I'm a fusion choreographer, and I started Company XIV to fuse all of the things that I love," McCormick said. "As a creator, I don't think that you have to work from the outside in—if it occurs to you that there's a relationship, then there is one."

For Company XIV, McCormick typically reimagines a classical ballet, a myth, or a fairy tale. He chooses the story, then determines what artistry serves that world — burlesque, nightlife, what he describes as "Baroque kind of grandeur." Dance, he said, is always the glue.

Giulia offered him a different kind of canvas. "Jennifer's written a dynamic musical with a lot of different musical inspirations and styling," he said. "A lot of the scenes are rooted in social dance—a festa where people are dancing, a commedia [dell'arte] troupe. And there are scenes where dance tells the story from an emotional point of view. So I get to draw on all of the different aspects of my background and my style."

The production also breaks from his usual practice in casting: Giulia has no dedicated dancers. "It's all singers and actors who move," McCormick said. "It's so different than working with dancers, with different vocabulary. I'm excited about what that's gonna turn into."

His approach to non-dancers starts with lowering the stakes. "You say the word 'dance' to actors and singers, and people freak out," he said. "The first thing I do is set the vibe that I'm looking for them to be themselves. I'm not looking for anything outside of who they are and what they're bringing to the table. If they can be comfortable, then we can really build something."

In the studio, he begins with a simple group phrase to gauge how people move. "I build a vocabulary based on that, then put it into the space and make formations," he said. "I like to let the dance feel pleasurable and not overly rigid."

Historical research anchors the choreography. McCormick studies how people danced in the 17th century and its vocabulary as a jumping-off point before it becomes, in his words, a fantasy version. Because little is documented about the real Giulia's life, artistic license fills the gaps.

Costume shapes movement from the earliest rehearsals. "I'm not the kind of choreographer that makes movement first, and then we put the costumes on; I think about it as one integrated challenge," he said. His Baroque dance training emphasized how big dresses, panniers, shoes and wigs affect movement. "The obstacle of the costume can lead to more interesting movement. There's no substitute for working in at least the shapes and the lengths as early as possible."

Working as a choreographer on someone else's production, rather than directing his own company, also shifts his role. "When you work on a team, it's a totally different mindset—I'm there for any contributions I can make," he said. "I understand how to contribute and also how to give space. And I think because I have Company XIV, this artistic outlet that feels so true to me, I'm not trying to make every situation into that."

If Giulia extends McCormick's fusion method from Brooklyn cabaret to a mainstream musical stage, it will test whether a style built for his own theater can translate to a production led by a Grammy winner and a Tony-winning director.