Doug Varone

“He is able to infuse his work with a sense of humanity,” says Cheryl Tobey who wrote an article about him. I love that his movements and choreography are so relatable to human relationships encountered everyday. “He is that rare choreographer that expresses emotion through dance,” says an article by the New York Times on Doug Varone. It is the emotion in his dance, and how he expresses relationships people have with each other, that I am interested in learning more.

Doug Varone is more than just a dancer, he is an artist in many different ways. He has a company which he has created some lovely pieces for. He has been a professional dancer in a modern dance company. He has choreographed four opera's for The Met among other opera's in the nation. He has choreographed for Broadway, off-Broadway, and films such as Pactric Swayze's One Last Dance. He has also created numerous works many different modern compnaies across the world including Limon Dance Company and Hubbard Street. This is just a preview of what Varone has accomplished, beacuase there is much more to this artist.

Who is he?

Doug Varone, have you heard of him? If you said “yes”, great, and here is your chance to learn more. If you said “no”, even better, as you get to learn about the exquisite compositions and brief life of Doug Varone.

Varone has created pieces such as Rise, Alchemy, Lux, and Boats Leaving to name a few. Graduating from SUNY Purchase, he thought he wanted to be a Broadway star, but found at Purchase there was more to dance, it was an art form and he could be an expressive artist. When he was young he was a tapper, and believed that was the only way he could dance for a living, but later Varone says, “dance was a unique contemporary artwork and you could say things with it” (Dance In Video). He was in the Limon Company for about a year. Then he danced with the Lar Lubovitch Company for eight.

Varone's company performing Orpheus and Euridice

He has always been creating things even when in these companies. He was influenced by the idea of wanting to create something other people were not. He leaves the boundaries he had grown up and been taught behind. He started to explore ways he never knew the body could move, different ways to use music, and get “off the block” (Dance in Video). He continues to make pieces and wow his audience. Dance in Video shows Varone talking about his company,
Doug Varone and Dancers, and his unplanned, yet still, upcoming plans.

Influences

Lubovitch Dance Company
Dancing with Lubovitch for eight years, Varone’s modern dance artist was formed. Lubovitch, originally had a background in painting and saw Jose Limon perform when he decided to drop painting and become a dancer. Lubovitch ended up going to Julliard for dance on a full scholarship and there he used the process of making movements and shapes, then putting them on different dancers and seeing what happens. In Lubovtich's company, he would start to relate those movements to music. Lubovitch's work requires much skill and technicality, but it is not all about the physical all the time, he uses a theoretical approach as well. This is how Varone was inspired for eight years before starting his own company in 1986.
Varone like his mentor, started out with a different idea of what he wanted to do in life, but through specific people and situations, dove into the world of modern dance. Varone is always trying to solve problems in his choreography, and show the expansiveness of dance.

Outside Effects

Varone started forming his pieces in a time when modern dance had been well established. He lived through changes in America that could have influenced his choreography. He is not an Anna Sokolow, making direct political statements, but he does create pieces that have a powerful effect on the audience.

The attack on the World Trade Towers is an event that happened during his time, and I believe may have influenced his reason why he has created some pieces that have focused on the American lineage. The piece he created for "Dance in America: Wolf Trap's Face of America" video, was about pioneers and where we came from. The relationship people not only have with each other, but have with the land and space they were given. This brings up another thing that happened during Varone’s time and that is, dance on video. Dance on video has not been around for a long time and Varone is one of the people to began to explore what could be done. Varone choreographed a piece in Mammoth Cave, the one for "Dance in America: Wolf Trap's Face of America." Dance boomed in pop culture during his time also. Varone’s company started in 1986, right around the time dance was being done by people such as Michael Jackson on music videos, on TV, and in concerts.
This does not mean Varone started to have his dancers moonwalk their way across the concert dance stage, but the high energy and theatrics this new discovery brought to pop culture could also have influenced some of his more theatric work.

It Matters

One way to describe Doug Varone’s works is, pedestrian. Pedestrian in the sense that he takes from life what he puts on stage. He can make movement out of how two people say hello. A lot of his focus is on relationships. Many different relationships and many different aspects of the relationships. I believe that is why his choreography is so intriguing and easy to relate to, because it is dancing of what we naturally do. His pieces tend to be more fast paced, athletic, and expansive. Although for things such as "Wolftrap's Face of America", his piece was very slow paced. It all depends on the relationship he is trying to convey. This video is a site specific work inside of Mammouth Cave, which was so amazing. It was all about pioneers, the struggles and how they affected each other. They then took their site specific dance and filmed it, and eventually brought it to the stage.


Varone's company dancing in Mammoth Cave

Varone's work impacts concert dance, because it has added athleticism that is not always a large part of modern dance. In pieces such as Lux, the dancers are running and jumping all around the stage, flinging their bodies, and exploding with movement. Also, since he has a way of showing relationships, he has brought abstraction in a natural sense to concert dance. Doug Varone and Dancers, his company, have many intriguing dances to check out on video.

This gives me something to think about when composing my own pieces. From an audience perspective, having meaning and intent gives everyone something to relate to. Personally, I want to convey something in my dances. It does not always have to be the largest political statement, but to make every movement express something that everyone will be able to relate to in a different way.

Outside Reviews on Doug Varone

It was 1994 and Jennifer Dunning wrote a review on Doug Varone's Aperture, On the Field of Destiny, and Rise. Being a well known dance review writer for the New York Times, Dunning's review on Varone is inspirational. The three works mentioned earlier are all great works of Varone, and very original pieces, as his company was only 8 years old. In her article, "Physical Side of an emotional world," Dunning states that there is "no clear narrative. They brim with pure, often high-energy physicality, for the most part letting stories be told through the relationships of the bodies..." Just showing how moving pure relationship built choreography can be. I encourage you to read her short article as she describes each dance with details about hand gestures, lighting, and sound, bringing together an experience you feel you have to see for yourself.

If you want a different review on Varone, Adrienne Fang, wrote an in-depth paper speaking of how Varone was his pure inspiration in the modern dance world. Having danced with Varone for ten years, Fang gives a more inside view on how Varone works. "Inspiration to Impulse: Inviting the Spectator to Enter In," is Fang's paper that shows Varone's intellect to choreographing, his openness to discovering new ideas, and his problem solving methods to create beautiful works of living art.