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Doug Varone And Dancers Celebrates 40 Years at The Joyce Theater

Company:
Doug Varone and Dancers

Doug Varone and Dancers Celebrates 40 years with a season at The Joyce Theater, 175 8th Avenue NYC 10011, (closest subways A,C,E,1) Wednesday, May 27, through Sunday ,May 31, 2026, for six performances with a 40th Anniversary Performance and Celebration on Thursday, May 28, 2026. An Opening Night post show curtain chat will take place on Wednesday, May 27. The complete run is as follows; Wednesday, May 27 through Friday, May 29 at 7:30pm, and Saturday and Sunday, May 30 and 31 at 2pm and 7:30pm. Running time: 90 minutes including intermission. Tickets may be purchased at The Joyce Theater Box Office, online here, or by calling (212) 242 0800. For more information on the 40th Anniversary Celebration, email info@dovadance.org. 

Honed over four decades, choreographer Doug Varone’s distinctive movement style captures both the deeply emotional and the immensely physical, making him "a rarity among his generation" (The New York Times). This year, Doug Varone and Dancers commemorates its 40th Anniversary with works from the company canon, including the New York premiere of No Matter What the End, set to Radiohead’s iconic album, In Rainbows, and the Bessie award-winning Boats Leaving (2006) set to Arvo Pärt’s, Te Deum. On Thursday, May 28, 2026 for the 40th Anniversary Performance and Celebration evening, the original cast of Boats Leaving will join the current company of dancers. The Celebration will be held at Affirmative Arts, 425 West 13th Street, NYC, 10013, 8th Floor following the performance.

About Doug Varone and Dancers: Doug Varone and Dancers (DOVA) brings the power, beauty, and humanity of dance to audiences worldwide. Touring nationally and internationally, the Company has built a rich legacy reaching audiences of all ages in urban and rural communities alike. It has been presented on major stages from Lincoln Center to London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Moscow’s Stanislavsky Theatre, Buenos Aires’ Teatro San Martin, and the Venice Biennale. Honored with 11 Bessie Awards, the Company is equally recognized for its highly sought-after education and outreach programs and its deep commitment to engage with local communities. DOVA celebrates its 40th Anniversary this year which includes a special performance of Bessie Nominated Boats Leaving…

“Boats Leaving …illustrates the defeating tensions and exhaustion of human struggle borne of horror, but also the poignancy of perseverance on both an individual and a communal level.” -Boston Globe                                                                                                                             

“A masterpiece. Varone's genius here consists of using tactics that are strictly formal, utterly devoid of sentiment, to arouse the spectators' deepest feelings.” -Bloomberg.com               

About Doug Varone: Award-winning choreographer and director, Doug Varone works in dance, theater, opera, film, and fashion. He is a passionate educator and articulate advocate for dance. By any measure, his work is extraordinary for its emotional range, kinetic breadth and the many arenas in which he works. His New York City-based Doug Varone and Dancers has been commissioned and presented to critical acclaim by leading international venues for close to three decades. In the concert dance world, Varone has created a body of works globally. Commissions include the Paul Taylor American Modern Dance Company, Limón Company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Rambert Dance Company (London), Martha Graham Dance Company, Dancemakers (Canada), Batsheva Dance Company (Israel), Bern Ballet (Switzerland), and An Creative (Japan), among others. In addition, his dances have been staged on more than 100 college and university programs around the country. In opera, Doug Varone is in demand as both a director and choreographer. Among his four productions at The Metropolitan Opera are Salome with its Dance of the Seven Veils, the world premiere of Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedy, Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, designed by David Hockney, and Hector Berloiz’s Les Troyens. He has staged multiple premieres and new productions for Minnesota Opera, Opera Colorado, Washington Opera, New York City Opera, and Boston Lyric Opera, among others. His numerous theater credits include choreography for Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional theaters across the country. His choreography for the musical Murder Ballad at Manhattan Theater Club earned him a Lortel Award nomination. Film credits include choreography for the Patrick Swayze film One Last Dance. In 2008, Varone’s The Bottomland, set in the Mammoth Caves of Kentucky, was the subject of the PBS Dance in America: Wolf Trap’s Face of America. Recent projects include directing and choreographing MASTERVOICES production of Dido and Aeneas at NY’s City Center, starring Tony Award winners Kelli O’Hara and Victoria Clark, and staging Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize winning oratorio Anthracite Fields for the Westminster Choir and the Bang on a Can All-Stars. The Company’s creative output is as varied as Varone’s interests. Recent projects include: everything is fine, a full evening movement play based on the poems of Billy Collins, with a new score by David Van Tieghem; The Scrapbook, a digital journal of 10 films created and directed by Varone, set to iconic songs from the 1940s-50’s, and Somewhere, Varone’s acclaimed nonnarrative version of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, and To My Arms/Restore set to the music of G.F. Handel.

The Dancers of Doug Varone and Dancers are Courtney Barth, Dareon Blowe, Joniece “JoJo” Boykins, Madison Elliott, Will Noling, Nicholas Ruscica, Kanon Sugino, Ryan Yumauchi.

Alumni Dancers performing on May 28th; Julia Burrer (2007-2014), Daniel Charon (1999-2010), Ryan Corriston (2005-2012), Natalie Desch (2001-2012), Adriane Fang (1996-2007), Stephanie Liapis (2002-2007), Alex Springer (2007-2017), Eddie Taketa (1994-2014).