Join Our Mailing List
"Boats Leaving" Photo by Phil Knott
Doug Varone parlays movement into rich metaphor. His high-velocity whirlwind moves and startling staccato passages capture the roiling of human emotion. The Company's 20th Anniversary season showcases the sweep and breadth of Varone's work with the premiere of Boats Leaving, a haunting human landscape to music by Arvo Pärt and two celebrated dances: Castles (2004), as full of passion, romance and whimsy as its Prokofiev score; and the breathtaking Possession (1994), to music by Philip Glass, with choreography so daring, beautiful and fraught with intensity, that its images burn long in ones memory.
..This profile was edited with Thomas' myspace editor™ V2.5DOUG VARONE is a choreographer of contemporary dance for the concert stage, as well as opera, Broadway, regional theater, film and television. He is best known for the 48 dances he has created for his own company, Doug Varone and Dancers, which he founded in 1986.Varone is the recipient of numerous honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Choo-San Goh Award. In 1998 he received a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) for Sustained Achievement in Choreography. In addition to his own company, Varone has been commissioned by numerous dance ensembles including the Limón Company, Dancemakers (Canada), Batsheva Dance Company (Israel), Uppercut Danse (Denmark), AnCreative (Japan), the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and the Colorado Ballet, among others.Since 1997, Varone has been increasingly sought after as a choreographer for opera. He choreographed a new production of Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps for New York's Metropolitan Opera which premiered in October 2003 and he returned to the Metropolitan Opera in the spring of 2004 to choreograph a new production of Strauss' Salome. Other opera credits include Hector Berlioz' Les Troyens, (New York's Metropolitan Opera); Die Walkurie (Washington Opera); the American premiere of George Antheil's Transatlantic (Minnesota Opera) and Rossini's Il Viaggio a Reims (New York City Opera). He both directed and choreographed Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice and Rossini's The Barber of Seville for Opera Colorado. Varone is also active in theater, television and film. He made his Broadway debut with the musical Triumph of Love . His regional theater credits include productions at Baltimore's Center Stage, Yale Repertory Theater, Walnut Street Theater, Princeton's McCarter Theater, Music Theater Group, The Vineyard Theater and Via Theater. Choreography for television and fashion include the dance and underwater sequences of the A&E Network production, The Planets (nominated for an International Emmy and Grammy Award for Long Form Video) and designer Geoffrey Beene's Couture Fashion Ballets in NYC. He was recently commissioned by W magazine to choreograph the photography of Michael Thompson, which was featured in the magazine's February 2004 edition. Film credits include choreography for the upcoming Patrick Swayze film, One Last Dance.Born in Syosset, NY, he attended Purchase College, where he received his Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts.OFFICIAL WEBSITE: Doug Varone and Dancers
