Doug Varone and Dancers
To Perform at
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival
August 2 – 6, 2017

New York City’s famed Doug Varone and Dancers will perform at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival at the Ted Shawn Theater, 358 George Carter Road, Becket, MA 01223, from August 2-6, 2017 with performances Wednesday-Saturday at 8pm; Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. Tickets are $39-69 and are available at www.jacobspillow.org/events/doug-varone-dancers/.
 
“We are delighted to be celebrating the 30th Anniversary of this important American contemporary dance company at the Pillow!  Varone’s work has extended beyond dance into opera and theatre worlds, and he has influenced the work of countless choreographers over the past three decades. We will have the chance to see Doug Varone himself present a new Nocturne to go alongside one that he performed at the Pillow in 2001, and we will experience his newest work, ReComposed, with a visual and movement palate that simply explodes onstage,” says Jacob’s Pillow Director Pamela Tatge. 
 
Praised for its “sheer kinetic force and profound emotional insight” (The Washington Post), modern dance company Doug Varone & Dancers delivers expansive vision, versatility, and technical prowess to the Ted Shawn Theatre.
 
The program begins with Varone himself in the World Premiere solo performance of Nocturne(s).  Thirty years ago, he created a solo for himself set to Chopin’s Nocturne #8 in D Flat Major, Opus 27, #2, a seminal work that explored the blur between pedestrian movement and pure dance that set in motion a signature vocabulary and style that Varone has mined ever since. Now, he has created another solo as a companion piece to the original, set to Chopin’s Nocturne (E Minor, Opus 71, #1). Varone will dance both of these solos side by side, as he celebrates thirty years of dance making.
 
The evening also includes Varone’s Boats Leaving, which premiered in 2006 and garnered two Bessie Awards, for Doug Varone’s choreography and lighting design by Jane Cox, and is set to Te Deum by Arvo Pärt.  Bloomberg News called the piece “a masterpiece. Varone’s genius here consists of using tactics that are strictly formal, utterly devoid of sentiment, to arouse the spectators’ deepest feelings.”
 
The company brings ReComposed, inspired by expressionist painter Joan Mitchell’s swirling pastels, set to co-founder/co-artistic director of Bang on a Can and acclaimed composerMichael Gordon’s tremendous orchestral score Dystopia.