The Doug Varone Masterworks Project
Cameron Khoshgam | Monday, February 25, 2019
Award-winning choreographer and director Doug Varone visited WVU last week through the School of Theatre & Dance’s Masterworks Project. He sat down with many of our dance majors, taught a master class on campus and worked on the school’s production of “Dance Now!” --in which his dance, “MASS” is the center piece.
Doug Varone, in the concert dance world, has crafted a body of works that spreads from Chicago to Japan. His dances have been performed in over 75 different college and university productions across the country. Varone has choreographed for Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional theatres across the country. In 1986 Varone started his New York City-based dance company, Doug Varone and Dancers, and for more than three decades they have garnered acclaim for leading international venues. Some of his awards and recognitions include: John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, OBIE Award (for the direction/choreography of Lincoln Center’s Orpheus and Euridice), Jerome Robbins Fellowship at the Boglaisco Institute in Italy, Two individual Bessie Awards, Two American Dance Festival Doris Duke Awards for New Work, Four National Dance Project Awards and a Loral award nomination for “Murder Ballad”, the Off-Broadway musical.
Quoted as being a “passionate educator and articulate advocate for dance,” Varone is a faculty member at Purchase College, where he received his own BFA, teaching composition. He also teaches workshops and master classes worldwide.
Mr. Varone was kind enough to answer some questions about dance education and how it has shaped his work:
What drew you to dance in the first place?
I think it is the most human of art forms. We dance every day whether we realize it or not, it’s in our DNA to move. So, in that regard, for as early as I can remember I was always dancing.
Can you talk a little on your own education/training? How has it shaped your view on teaching others?
I began as a young tap dancer and did a lot of musical theater. As a student at Purchase College, I was introduced to contemporary dance and it rocked my work. The idea that you can say something important with movement as opposed to just entertainment change the course of my life.
What do you look for in dancers you want to work with?
I look for smart dancers who have information that I don’t, and I look for dancers who have a true sense of who they are as artists and can immediately add that into the creative mix. I work very fast and collaboratively and I need to know that a dancer is up for the challenge. I usually never hire people I don’t know or whose dancing and work ethic I am unfamiliar with.
What was your experience working with the dancers here at WVU?
The dancers at WVU are tremendous. “MASS” is a very challenging dance and really demands so much physically and emotionally from the cast. They’ve taken great care of the work and pushed both the dance and their dancing to a new level.
How is working with real-world professionals a viable learning experience for students in a university of college environment?
Sometimes it is about arriving with current information but more importantly it is really about reaffirming what their faculty has been saying all along, just from a different perspective. Young dancers don’t always have an understanding that much of what they are learning is universal, regardless of style. Also, being able to talk with them about the dance field and our careers takes some of the mystery around what will happen when they dance professionally.
If you could only give one piece of advice to aspiring performers, what would it be?
Be able to do everything and keep learning, always. Don’t ever stop.
A note from Dr. Yoav Kaddar, “Dance Now!” director and Associate Professor in Dance:
The Masterworks project begun my second year here when we restaged Paul Taylor’s “Aureole”. I came up with the idea of giving our students the opportunity to work on and perform a dance by a master choreographer or guest artist. I felt then, as I still feel today, that this is an important component of the dance education that we give our students here at WVU; for them to know a piece of choreography from the inside out, experiencing a rehearsal process that is intensive and demanding while working with a professional, an active dance artist other than their WVU faculty, is priceless. Over the years we’ve done works by Billy Siegenfeld, Artistic Director of Jump Rhythm Jazz from Chicago, Lawrence Jackson from Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Meredith Dincolo from Hubbard Street Dance, Chicago, Holly Williams former member of the Mark Morris and Laura Dean dance companies as well as independent choreographers such as Adam Baruch from NYC, WV choreographers Donald Laney, Angela Dennis, Gretchen Moore and Dan Karaznik from Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA.
Doug Varone’s work that will be performed at “Dance Now!” [“MASS”] is a 10-minute piece for 12 dancers. This is a stand-alone section from a larger piece that Doug has created for his company. The cast that will perform the piece in “Dance Now!” is comprised of all our graduating seniors (yes, 12 of them!). That was Doug’s intention and choice, which speaks highly of our graduating senior class. This specific project will continue through next year in hopes that the piece will be performed with Doug’s company here, at WVU as part of the company’s full-evening concert scheduled as the center piece of our ACDA Mid-Atlantic South conference gala concert in March of 2020. At that concert the plan is for our students (a second cast that has already been selected and has been rehearsing alongside our current seniors) to perform the section within the entire piece with Doug’s company.
This project is made possible in part by the Office of the Dean and the David Selby Guest Artist Fund.
