Doug Varone to Create a New Work for Paul Taylor’s Dancers

Photo

Doug Varone, the longtime choreographer and artistic director of the troupe Doug Varone and Dancers, is the latest dance-maker chosen to create a work for Paul Taylor American Modern Dance’s commissioning program.

Mr. Varone, whose company performs next week at New Victory Theater’s summer series Victory Dance, will develop the new work with Taylor dancers ahead of its premiere in 2018 as part of the Paul Taylor American Modern Dance season at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center.

He is the fourth person Mr. Taylor has tapped for Taylor Company Commissions, which was created in 2015 with the reinvention of the Paul Taylor Dance Company. The others include Doug Elkins (“The Weight of Smoke”), Larry Keigwin (“Rush Hour”) and Lila York (“Continuum”).

The program, Mr. Taylor has said, is an opportunity for “the next generation” of choreographers to work with his dancers. That doesn’t necessarily mean that recipients have been young, or even emerging; Mr. Elkins has created commissioned works since the 1980s, for example, and Ms. York, a former Taylor dancer, is in her 60s.

Mr. Varone is 60, and his company is more than 30 years old. In addition to receiving commissions from other troupes, including the Limón and Martha Graham Dance Companies, he has also been a longtime stage choreographer. He created the Dance of the Seven Veils currently used in the Metropolitan Opera’s staging of Richard Strauss’s “Salome” and contributed choreography to Francesca Zambello’s production of Berlioz’s “Les Troyens.”

Other recent credits include the musical “Murder Ballad,” at Manhattan Theater Club in 2012, and the MasterVoices production of “Dido and Aeneas,” starring Kelli O’Hara and Victoria Clark, at New York City Center last year.

Continue reading the main story