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Choreographer and director Doug Varone works in dance, theater, opera, film, television and fashion. In 2007 he created three major pieces for his own Doug Varone and Dancers – the full-length multi-media Dense Terrain at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Victorious, commissioned by Bard’s SummerScape, and Beyond the Break commissioned by Wolf Trap. In October 2008 his new work Alchemy premiered, set to Steve Reich's Daniel Variations. Varone takes his inspiration from the Steve Reich score which juxtaposes text from the biblical book of Daniel and the words of Daniel Pearl, the American Jewish reporter kidnapped and murdered by Islamist extremists in Pakistan in 2002. Reichs music pays homage to all victims who, in the face of violence and cruelty, courageously reveal the dignity and beauty of humanity.
In 2010 Varone will premiere a work entitled "Chapters from a Broken Novel" with a new score composed by David van Tieghem. The work is inspired by quotes collected over the years, and will be performed as an evening length work, as well as in excerpted forms.
Varone was awarded a 2006 OBIE for his direction and choreography of Ricky Ian Gordon’s Orpheus and Euridice at Lincoln Center for its American Songbook series. That same year, he created works for opera and theater, and many of his dances were staged around the nation by other companies. For New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Varone has choreographed new productions of Le sacre du printemps, Les Troyens, Salome, and the world premiere of Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedy. Other opera choreography includes Die Walküre; Il Viaggio a Reims; and the American premieres of George Antheil’s Transatlantic, and Ricky Ian Gordon’s debut production of Grapes of Wrath.
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