Pillow Presents Doug Varone's Lux, Castles, & Short Story
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BECKET, Mass. - Doug Varone and Dancers, the acclaimed modern dance company widely admired for its intelligent, humanist choreography, dynamic movement quality, and technical expertise, performs at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival August 12-16. Led by founder and Artistic Director Doug Varone, the company will present three emotionally and kinesthetically engaging works, each set to music by renowned composers. Varone, a former dancer with Limón Dance Company and Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, is recognized as one of today’s top choreographers, and his works demonstrate an expansive movement vocabulary, a rapt musicality, and an appeal to both intellect and emotion. As The Washington Post’s Sarah Kaufman writes, “At his best, Varone puts the beating heart at the center of his work.
Ella Baff, Jacob’s Pillow Executive Director, comments, “An evening with Doug Varone and Dancers reminds people why they like dance. The movement is dynamic, rigorous, and musical. Doug also creates work that is dramatic and emotionally rich - one always feels there is a big heart holding hands with a sharp mind.”
This Pillow program opens with Castles (2004), a whirling, intricate work choreographed to Sergei Prokofiev’s “Waltz Suite, Opus 110,” which includes familiar music from the ballet Cinderella. The six-movement piece features the entire company and is a flurry of continuous movement, with dancers pairing up and linking to one another through a web of innovative, complex combination. As they fill the stage with expansive traveling phrases and large gestures, the movement alternates between acts of compassionate cooperation and insistent commands. Robert Gottlieb, dance critic of The New York Observer, writes, “Castles is the best new dance piece I've seen in a long time. It brings together, distilled and heightened, the qualities Varone is generally known for—the physical excitement, the depth of feeling, the implication of story (but what story?). And Castles perfectly suits his company, which, although diverse in look, is so united in approach.”
Following this work is Short Story (2001). Set to “Prelude in C,” a piano piece by Sergei Rachmaninoff, this duet embodies a couple in the throes of a tumultuous relationship. Varone often employs pedestrian movement to capture human emotions, and in this work, the audience sees that though this man and woman can’t seem to get along, they can’t bear to live apart. “There's much to admire in Varone's fine, imaginative rendering of a simple tale; never resorting to gimmicks, he understands the intimacy that the flick of a hand or the back of a drooping head communicates,” writes Gia Kourlas for Dance Magazine.
Last on the program is Lux, which was created in 2006 to celebrate Doug Varone and Dancers’ 20th anniversary, and features the entire company. Set against a dark backdrop “sky” with a steadily rising the moon, the work, to Philip Glass’ “The Light,” is full of the sweeping, kinetic activity that Varone is well-known for. Though the movement grows more frenzied throughout, the work maintains its ethereal beauty, which, as The Washington Post’s Sarah Kaufman explains, is full of “the kind of dancing I might dream about: loose and sweeping in a spirit of exultation.”
Founded in 1986, Doug Varone and Dancers has grown into a major force in the dance world, both in its native New York City and internationally. The resident company at the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, Doug Varone and Dancers has performed in more than 100 cities in the United States as well as venues in Europe, Asia, Canada, and South America. Known for its multi-disciplinary residency programs, the company holds open rehearsals, showings, performances, workshops, and classes. Sylviane Gold of Newsday says, “This is a company of master dancers, performing masterly choreography.” Varone’s company has performed at Jacob’s Pillow in 1999, 2001, and 2003. On August 15, he will take part in a free PillowTalk entitled Doug Varone: The Artist as Citizen to discuss how he uses choreography to tackle questions at the heart of society.
Doug Varone is a renowned choreographer whose work has been performed on stage, in films, and on television. He is a prolific choreographer who has been commissioned by the Joyce Theater in New York City, White Bird Dance in Oregon, the Carlsen Center in Kansas, the Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Maryland, Bard’s SummerScape, and Wolf Trap. Varone has received numerous awards for his work, including two American Dance Festival Doris Duke Awards for New Work, three awards from the National Dance Project, and two New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Awards for Sustained Achievement in Choreography. In addition to choreographing for Doug Varone and Dancers, he has worked in theatre, opera, film, television, and fashion, including prestigious assignments at the Metropolitan Opera and on Broadway. His work is praised for its ability to connect with audiences on an emotional level as well as a kinesthetic level.
For more information visit www.dougvaroneanddancers.org or www.jacobspillow.org.
