Doug Varone News

The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College (The PAC) announces the 2019-2020 Season

Live Arts Pride 2019: THE HOUSE PARTY - 50 FOR 50 is New York Live Arts' 2nd annual Pride celebration; a building wide and sidewalk multi-genre event in the historic "gayborhood" of Chelsea, just blocks from the Pride March. The epic 6-hour celebration honors the historical importance and unwavering power of collectives in LGBTQAI culture and pays tribute to the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. Both legendary and young families from NYC's queer nightlife and art scene come together under one roof to serve up the city's most colorful and fierce performance, music, queer marketplace, installations and more for a multi-space, nonstop celebration for the ages.

Doug Varone and Dancers in the shelter of the fold / epilogue is a transcendent and transfixing inquiry into public and private relationships to faith through seven vignettes that intermingled fluidly at BAM's Fisher from June 5-8th. The thirteen bodies in nearly continuous motion -- choreographed by Varone -- were so mesmerizing that the captivated viewers were on the edge of their seats during the entire performance. The evening was as sonically spellbinding as it was visually enchanting thanks to the complex, varied and at times otherworldly or ethereal sounds provided a diverse array of multiple compositions played by Bang on a Can All-Stars with PUBLIQuartet and Lesley Flanigan.

Join Infinity Dance Theater and Alison Cook Beatty Dance for a dynamic performance at The Riverside Theatre featuring 24 dancers with and without disabilities. Infinity's first formal New York concert program was presented at The Riverside Theatre in 1997, so Infinity is thrilled to return to Riverside in 2019 for a full concert engagement with Alison Cook Beatty Dance. Alison Cook-Beatty, Founder and Artistic Director, has performed with the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Taylor 2, among other companies and choreographers in New York City. She has performed with Infinity Dance Theater at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

10 Hairy Legs, the male repertory dance company, will hold its first Live Streaming Event on Friday, May 17 from 3:00 - 5:00 pm to launch The 10HL Choreographic Initiative to raise $100,000 during the coming year. The Initiative will fund our overarching commitment to commissioning 10 choreographers in the next 5 years. The Initiative serves to further demonstrate the company's commitment to the importance of bold and new choreographic voices in the field that challenge and inspire. 

 Doug Varone and Dancers returns to BAM with the New York premiere of in the shelter of the fold / epilogue, an evening-length work of seven interconnected vignettes that considers and questions faith.

The line between Broadway-type musical theatre and opera becomes finer by the year--though I dare say that TOOTSIE is unlikely to be showing up at the Met any time soon. But the Kurt Weill-Ira Gershwin-Moss Hart LADY IN THE DARK might have morphed in a slightly different, better piece of music theatre if it arrived in the 21st century rather than World War II.

10 Hairy Legs, the male repertory dance company, will hold its first Live Streaming Event on Friday, May 17 from 3:00 - 5:00 pm to launch The 10HL Choreographic Initiative to raise $100,000 during the coming year. The Initiative will fund our overarching commitment to commissioning 10 works in the next 5 years. The Initiative serves to further demonstrate the company's commitment to the importance of bold and new choreographic voices in the field that challenge and inspire.

There's an unfortunate guffaw in the otherwise well-calibrated British thriller of '46, 'Dead of Night,' when Mervyn Johns (Glynis' dad), sensing he's sinking into insanity, brings a shaky hand to his forehead and says, 'I've got to get to a mental specialist.'

10 Hairy Legs, the male repertory dance company, holds its 7th consecutive New York Season with a return to New York Live Arts June 27-29. Presented are World Premieres by Larry Keigwin and Adam Barruch. Barruch's work will have a newly composed score by Roarke Menzies. Larry Keigwin is a native New Yorker and choreographer who has danced his way from the Metropolitan Opera to Broadway and back. He founded KEIGWIN + COMPANY in 2003 and as artistic director, he has led the company as it has performed at The Kennedy Center, The Joyce Theater, The Guggenheim, and New York City Center, among many other venues. Adam Barruch currently creates and performs work under the epithet of his own company, Anatomiae Occultii. In addition, he has also created works for companies such as The Limón Company, Ailey II, Keigwin + Company, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, River North Dance Chicago, BalletX, Whim W'Him Seattle Contemporary Dance, Graham II, GroundWorks Dance Theater, Gina Gibney Dance Company and Minnesota Dance Theatre, as well as for dance icons Margie Gillis and Miki Orihara.

MasterVoices will conclude its 2018-19 season with the world premiere of a new adaptation of the legendary Kurt Weill, Ira Gershwin, Moss Hart musical Lady in the Dark. Presented as part of New York City Center's 75th anniversary season, it is directed and conducted by MasterVoices Artistic Director Ted Sperling, and choreographed by Doug Varone. The musical will star Tony Award winner Victoria Clark in the lead role of Liza Elliott. In addition to the previously announced performances on April 25 and 26, because of high-ticket demand, a matinee has been added for April 27. Opening on Broadway in 1941, Lady in the Dark was groundbreaking in its unusual subject matter psychoanalysis and unconventional structure. It has not been seen in New York in 25 years, since it was presented as part of the inaugural Encores! season at New York City Center in 1994.

Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim, presents a Works & Process dance and costume commission by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung with new choreography by Christopher Williams and Netta Yerulshamy in collaboration with NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World's exhibition, Hymn to Apollo: The Ancient World and the Ballets Russes, on Sunday and Monday, April 28 and 29, 2019 at 7:30pm

MasterVoices will conclude its 2018-19 season with the world premiere of a new adaptation of the legendary Kurt Weill, Ira Gershwin, Moss Hartmusical Lady in the Dark. Presented as part of New York City Center's 75th-anniversary season, it is directed and conducted by MasterVoices Artistic Director Ted Sperling, and choreographed by Doug Varone.

New York Live Arts (Live Arts) to present the New York premiere of Netta Yerushalmy's Paramodernities, March 14-17, 2019, having commissioned the work as part of the Live Feed Residency Program. The complete six-part encyclopedic series is a multidisciplinary work that weaves theory and performance into a four-hour-long hybrid event. Yerushalmy and a cast of 20 dancers and scholars, ranging in age from 20 to 68, perform deconstructed installments of Nijinsky's “Sacre” (1913), Graham's “Night Journey” (1947), Ailey's “Revelations” (1960), a mix of Cunningham works “Rainforest,” “Sounddance”, “Points in Space”, “Beach Birds”,  and “Ocean” (1968-1990), dance numbers from the 1969 Fosse's film “Sweet Charity”, and a response to Balanchine's “Agon” (1957) that includes none of the original choreography.

The Kurt Weill Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Jesse Leong as the recipient of the Julius Rudel/Kurt Weill Conducting Fellowship. Established in 2015 to honor Rudel's extraordinary artistic achievements and dedication to the music of Kurt Weill, this award enables a young conductor in the early stages of a career to assist a master conductor in the preparation and performance of a work by Weill or Marc Blitzstein and expand his or her knowledge of their works. The fellowship carries a stipend of $10,000.

Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre has been offering its unique dance educations program through its arts education arm Notes in Motion Outreach Dance Theatre since 2000. We became a vendor of NYC Department of Education in 2005 and since that time, have been offering a wide array of residency, professional development, interactive performance, and after-school programs that teach ballet, modern, jazz, African, tap, hip hop, yoga, Latin dance, and more.

10 Hairy Legs, the male repertory dance company, received 100+ responses to its call to choreographers to create new works for the company. Submissions included candidates from across the United States, Europe, Puerto Rico and India. 44% of the submissions were from women. Candidates were asked to submit a vision for the work in 10 words or less and a video that best represents their aesthetic.

10 Hairy Legs, the male repertory dance company will teach 4 Int/Adv Contemporary Classes at STEPS on Broadway Wednesdays and Fridays January 9 - 18 from 3:00 - 4:30 pm. Artistic Director Randy James and members of the Artistic Staff will oversee and observe all the classes. Class begins with dynamic floor sequences that warm up the body's core, using the floor as a tool to explore connectivity throughout the entire body. The floor sequences build on one another, bringing the mover to standing phrases across the floor. Once on two feet the class establishes the body's connection with dynamic shifts in and out of the ground, culminating in a final phrase that builds upon the body's exploration of different initiations with supple and expressive virtuosity. Phrase work from our extensive repertory of commissioned and curated work will be explored.

92Y's Harkness Dance Festival celebrates its 25th season celebrating Merce Cunningham's centennial. For five weekends from March 1-30, HDF presents performances of Merce's own choreography for Cross Currents, Doubles, Landrover, Loose Time, Scenario and Septet, danced by New York Theatre Ballet, Melissa Toogood, Calvin Royal III and New World School of the Arts. The Festival continues with four weekends of world premieres representing four generations of Cunningham dancers who established companies of their own - Douglas Dunn, Dylan Crossman, Jonah Bokaer and Ellen Cornfield.