Doug Varone
Award-winning choreographer and director Doug Varone works in dance, theater, opera, film, television and fashion. He is a passionate educator and articulate advocate for dance. By any measure, his work is extraordinary for its emotional range, kinetic breadth and the many arenas in which he works.
His New York City-based Doug Varone and Dancers has been commissioned and presented to critical acclaim by leading international venues for more than two decades. In 2008, Varone’s Bottomland, set in the Mammoth Caves of Kentucky, was the subject of the PBS “Dance in America: Wolf Trap’s Face of America.”
In opera, Varone is in demand as a director and choreographer. Among his four productions at the Met are Salome, with its sensational Dance of the Seven Veils for Karita Mattila, and the world premiere of Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedy. He has staged multiple premieres and new productions for Minnesota Opera and Opera Colorado and choreographed for Washington Opera and New York City Opera, among others. Varone is a frequent collaborator of composer Ricky Ian Gordon: choreography, The Grapes of Wrath (2008); and direction and choreography for Orpheus and Euridice for Lincoln Center (2006 Obie Award).
His numerous theater credits include choreography for Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional theaters across the country. He staged several seasons of designer Geoffrey Beene’s NYC couture runway shows. Film credits include choreography for the Patrick Swayze film “One Last Dance.”
Varone has also created works for the Limon Company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Rambert Dance Company (London), Dancemakers (Canada), Batsheva Dance Company (Israel), Bern Ballet (Switzerland) and An Creative (Japan), among others. His dances have been staged on more than 75 college and university programs.
Varone received his BFA from Purchase College, where he was awarded the Presidential Distinguished Alumni Award in 2007. Honors also include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two American Dance Festival Doris Duke Awards for New Work, four from the National Dance Project and two individual New York Dance and Performance Awards (Bessies) – for Sustained Achievement in Choreography and for his 2006 Boats Leaving.
