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| Doug Varone and Dancers Take Up Residence at Harkness Dance Center |
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| Tickets/Registration: 212.415.5500 |
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| Media Contact: Sarah Morton, 212.415.5435, email |
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| DOUG VARONE AND DANCERS TAKE UP RESIDENCE AT 92ND STREET Y HARKNESS DANCE CENTER |
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| Company enjoys first home; Y expands historic role as partner in the creation of contemporary dance |
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"Master dancers, performing masterly choreography" — Newsday
"The rare choreographer with a gift for expressing emotion through dance" — The New York Times
The 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center receives major support from the Harkness Foundation for Dance and additional major support from the Arnhold Foundation.
Doug Varone and Dancers' residency has been funded by Daphne Recanati and Thomas S. Kaplan. It is part of the Recanati-Kaplan Program for Excellence in the Arts, which also funds a program of full tuition and merit-based scholarships for children and teens studying in the 92nd Street Y's art, music and dance programs.
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| New York, NY, October, 23, 2007—This fall, the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center continues its more than seven-decades-long commitment to modern dance by welcoming the acclaimed Doug Varone and Dancers as company-in-residence for the 2007-2008 season. The residency — the Center's first in three decades — offers the 20-year-old troupe its first home base ever. The company will develop and rehearse new pieces, teach workshops and classes, and work with the Dance Center's teen performance troupe. Varone has a long history with the Dance Center that includes studying with one of the last companies in residence, the Limón Dance Company in the 1970s; developing work in the Center's studios as a young choreographer in the '80s; performing with his company in the '90s and since; and teaching workshops, which he has done for over a decade. |
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Explains Renata Celichowska, director of the Dance Center, "Our goal is to bring the professional dance community closer to the 92nd Street Y dance community and to create opportunities for cross-pollination. Doug is a remarkable artist and his history with the Y, as well as his broad, humanistic approach to dance, makes him and his company an ideal choice for what we hope will be an ongoing program."
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For Varone, the residency is a welcome step forward for his company, which, in its 20 years of existence, has never had the luxury of a home base. "It wasn't a priority for us, but now it's important in helping define who we are," he says. As for the Y, "The energy in this building is remarkable; there's so much going on, on so many different fronts. It's like a small city that educates and supports."
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Varone is a veteran of the Dance Center. For the last 10 years, it has been the only place in New York where dancers could take class with him. Varone has also participated in all of the Y's performance programs, including the annual the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival. But Varone's connection to the Center goes back even further, to the 1970s, when, as a SUNY Purchase undergraduate, he took class with the Limón Dance Company while it was in residence at the Y. Later, as a young choreographer in the 1980s, he developed new work in the Center's studios.
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| RESIDENCY IS MULTIFACETED |
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Doug Varone and Dancers' residency will consist of several things:
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Creating New Work — One of Varone's major projects this season is choreographing a new work set to Steve Reich's choral work Daniel Variations. Varone will take his inspiration from the Reich score which juxtaposes text from the Old Testament's Book of Daniel, about an Israelite advisor to the King of Babylon (located in present-day Iraq,) and the words of Daniel Pearl, the American Jewish reporter murdered by Islamist extremists in Pakistan in 2002. "Mixing conflict with balance, the dance will explore how mercy and compassion can offer us hope in the face of brutality," says Varone.
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Teaching Students — The company will offer professional-level workshops open for public enrollment and, starting in early 2008, Varone and company members will teach a two-hour class four days a week. The classes will focus on the Varone's specific technique and will incorporate passages from the company's extensive repertory. Says Renata Celichowska, the Dance Center's director, "Doug's style of teaching is wonderful, with a balance between individual attention and group work. It's also very active; by the end of the class, you know you've really been moving."
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Working with Young Dancers — Senior company members and choreographer Todd Williams, artistic director of the Y's teen troupe, the Harkness Repertory Ensemble, will set a Varone work on the young performers. The ensemble will perform the piece during its spring performance season.
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Helping Senior Adults "Map" Their Lives — Varone also hopes to work with the 92nd Street Y's senior-adult group on an oral history project in which movement is used to shape and present experience. The process, called "mapping," involves having the participants "move through different places in the room, signifying different places they've lived, Varone explains. "They talk about their experiences, their heritages, their fantasies, and they make up a movement for each place. They start to build small dances with those movements." Seniors "have the best stories to tell," says the choreographer, "and they're at a level of education and articulation that you and I can only dream about."
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| 92nd STREET Y HAS A LONG HISTORY OF SUPPORTING CHOREOGRAPHERS |
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The company-in-residence program reflects the Dance Center's historic support of both established and up-and-coming choreographers. From the Center's 1935 founding through the 1960s, virtually every important figure in modern dance created, taught and performed there — artists including Martha Graham, Paul Taylor, Pearl Primus, Alvin Ailey, Merce Cunningham, Jerome Robbins, Agnes de Mille, Robert Joffrey and Donald McKayle.
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In recent decades, the Center has renewed its active support of choreographers. Since the 1980s, a space grant program has provided studio space to over 400 choreographers, including such well known artists as Mark Morris, Lar Lubovitch, Bill T. Jones, Pearl Lang, Bill Irwin and David Parsons. Two informal performance programs, Fridays @ Noon and Sundays @ Three, allow choreographers to try out new work in a relaxed setting and get feedback from audiences.
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Many of those who perform in these programs graduate to the Dance Center's fully-produced annual showcase, the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival, which has played a critical role in the careers of several artists. Ben Munisteri has said that being presented at the 2001 Festival "helped other people take me seriously" and was a turning point in his career. For Nicholas Leichter, being part of an established dance festival known for presenting high quality work was "a big deal" for a young company. Participating in the 2002 Festival, he has said, "had a major affect on my career because it put us out there."
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Other choreographers have spoken of how important the Dance Center's support has been to their professional development. "The Y has always been there when I needed them for rehearsal space," Heidi Latsky said in 2004. "[It] gave me a sense...of belonging somewhere, which you usually don't feel when you work in isolation as a choreographer." That sentiment is shared by Keely Garfield. "The team there makes a commitment to artists for the long haul," she has said. "You're able to develop work as I did through space grants and works-in-progress showings and performances... It's about... supporting the individual voice and vision."
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| ABOUT DOUG VARONE AND DANCERS |
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Doug Varone and Dancers has been widely acclaimed since Varone founded the company in 1986. The troupe has performed at many venues in New York City and in 44 other states as well as in Canada, Europe, Asia and South America. The company was awarded three Bessies last fall (for a total of 11), which join similar honors from the American Dance Festival and the National Dance Project. Varone himself has won an Obie Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Leading institutions including Jacob's Pillow, the Joyce Theater, the Wolf Trap Foundation, Bard's Summerscape, Oregon's Whitebird and the Carlsen Center in Kansas City have commissioned works from Doug Varone and Dancers, and the company has collaborated on productions with the Metropolitan Opera, the Minnesota Opera, and the Aquila Theatre Company. This fall and winter Doug Varone and Dancers performs in New York City, Dallas, Vermont and Hawaii. For more information, please visit www.dougvaroneanddancers.org.
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| ABOUT THE 92nd STREET Y HARKNESS DANCE CENTER |
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In 1935, what is now the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center provided a home to the fledgling modern dance movement and its leader, Martha Graham. Among the great artists who have created, performed and taught at the Y are Alvin Ailey, Merce Cunningham, Jerome Robbins, Agnes de Mille, Erick Hawkins, Robert Joffrey, Pearl Lang, and Donald McKayle, building the foundation for contemporary dance as we know it. In recent years, they have been joined by today's dance stars, like David Parsons, Zvi Gotheiner, Keely Garfield, Neil Greenberg, Bill T. Young, Maia Claire Garrison, David Dorfman and Sean Curran. With the generous support of the Harkness Foundation for Dance, the Center continues to nurture the teaching, creation and performance of modern dance, serving adults, children, dance professionals and the community at large through classes and performance programs including The 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival, the Y's annual contemporary dance festival.
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| ABOUT THE 92nd STREET Y |
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Founded in 1874 by a group of visionary Jewish leaders, the 92nd Street Y has grown into a wide-ranging cultural, educational and community center serving people of all ages, races, faiths and backgrounds. The 92nd Street Y's mission is to enrich the lives of the over 300,000 people who visit each year — both in person and through the Y's satellite, television, radio and Internet broadcasts. The organization offers comprehensive performing arts, film and spoken word events; courses in the humanities, the arts, personal development and Jewish culture; activities and workshops for children, teenagers and parents; and health and fitness programs for people of every age. Committed to making its programs available to everyone, the 92nd Street Y awards nearly $1 million in scholarships annually and reaches out to 8,000 public school children through fully-subsidized arts education programs. For more information, please visit www.92Y.org. |
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© 2008 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association
All Rights Reserved. |
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