Award-winning choreographer and director Doug Varone works in dance, theater, opera, film, television and fashion. His Bottomland was the critic’s pick for Dance in America’s “Wolf Trap’s Face of America,” nationally broadcast on PBS in 2008. His direction and choreography of Ricky Ian Gordon’s Orpheus and Euridice garnered him a 2006 Obie Award.

He established Doug Varone and Dancers in 1986 as an opportunity to explore and process his choreographic vision. The company has been presented by major venues and festivals worldwide including: The Joyce Theater, The Kennedy Center, London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Moscow’s Stanislavsky Theater, and Jacob’s Pillow.

Doug Varone’s unique artistic output has earned the company many honors including eight New York Dance and Performance Awards (Bessies) and the American Dance Festival’s Doris Duke Award for New Work. Varone has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts since 1988.

As a Granada Artists, Varone devised DANCING ON THE EDGE: Fractured Lives, a series of interrelated vignettes, each with a dramatic agenda suggesting film noir , alternately turning from realistic to bizarre and from light-hearted to dark. In signature Varone style, Fractured Lives displayed extraordinary physical daring and vivid musicality capturing the nuances of human interaction.

In addition to his own company, Varone has been commissioned by numerous dance ensembles including the Limón Company, Dancemakers (Canada), Batsheva Dance Company (Israel), Uppercut Danse (Denmark), AnCreative (Japan), the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and the Colorado Ballet, among others. Since 1997, Varone has been increasingly sought after as a choreographer for opera. He choreographed a new production of Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps for New York’s Metropolitan Opera which premiered in October 2003 and he returned to the Metropolitan Opera in the spring of 2004 to choreograph a new production of Strauss’ Salome. Other opera credits include Hector Berlioz’ Les Troyens, (New York’s Metropolitan Opera); Die Walkurie (Washington Opera); the American premiere of George Antheil’s Transatlantic (Minnesota Opera) and Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims (New York City Opera). He both directed and choreographed Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice and Rossini’s The Barber of Seville for Opera Colorado. Varone is also active in theater, television and film. He made his Broadway debut with the musical Triumph of Love. His regional theater credits include productions at Baltimore’s Center Stage, Yale Repertory Theater, Walnut Street Theater, Princeton’s McCarter Theater, Music Theater Group, The Vineyard Theater and Via Theater. Choreography for television and fashion include the dance and underwater sequences of the A&E Network production, The Planets (nominated for an International Emmy and Grammy Award for Long Form Video) and designer Geoffrey Beene’s Couture Fashion Ballets in NYC. He was recently commissioned by W magazine to choreograph the photography of Michael Thompson, which was featured in the magazine’s February 2004 edition. Film credits include choreography for the upcoming Patrick Swayze film, One Last Dance.

Born in Syosset, NY, he attended Purchase College, where he received his Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts.