Ing Company with Choreographer Doug Varone

r v H | H » Keeping Company With Choreographer Doug Varone... 2A| f THE ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT SECTION OF THE DAILY NEXUS F o r T h e Week o f O c t o b e r 1 0 19 9 1 In The Rising in Popularity, Metal Acts Are Putting Money Where Their Mouths Are A J. GODDARD/fbr the Non» ily Ncxuel 2A Thursday, October 10,1991 ore ake room at the top of the perfor feat he could accomplish only with an ex mance dance charts for Doug ceptional group of dancers. Varone and Dancers. The mod “I think one of the unique things about Mern company has left critics every my company is that it’s made up of seven where, from the New York Times to different kinds of people. I’m not inter Dancemagazine, in choreographic awe. ested in dancers who are clones... because They rave about Varone’s musical insight, when we’re creating, I see them as colors his structurally tight yet emotionally im that I can choose from to paint with,” Var pulsive movements. They say his portray one said. als of the human experience smack of The choreographer’s solo, “Nocturne,” riveting energy. In the world of contem is set to a romantic Chopin melody. The porary dance, Varone is right up there with underlying impulse of the score is amaz Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor. ingly synchronized with what the Choreographing since 1979, Varone Washington Post described as Varone’s danced for a year with the Jose Limon “streetwise, don’t-mess-with-me aura, Dance Company and then spent eight marked by finger snaps, an angry spurt of years as a leading dancer with the Lar Lo- turns, all purely contemporary in feeling.” bovitch troupe. Overall, Varone said, the program is Last season, Varone’s six-year-old, New “fairly eclectic, and some might even call it York-based company made its debut in schizophrenic, because it doesn’t really South America and Asia. Fortunately for look like it’s all from the same Varone’s fans, the troupe returned to the choreographer.” States this season to tour their new reper “And I like that.” tory, a four-piece, stylistically diverse Spontaneity, realism and freshness are program to be presented this Tuesday at 8 among Varone’s priorities for his dancers’ p.m. in Campbell Hall. performance. “I give the performers a great The newest piece is called “Stranded liberalism to experience each performance Landfish,” and Varone said that it had its a different way,” he said. His top priority, original inspiration in Francis Bacon’s however, “is that there’s an honesty in ev paintings (which, he thinks, have a ten erything that’s done.” dency to be terribly grotesque, but added “I’m interested in having the audience “We tried to find the humor in if’). come past the procenium on the stage with “We started choreographing it to Bar- us in terms of their emotions... by present tok’s ‘String Quartet Number Four,”’ Var ing work that is very honest and very real,” one said, “which is this extraordinarily ser he said. ious piece of work, and it just got to be too Admittedly, Varone has several inter much. ... We now dance it to some ests in creating new works. “I’m really in Equadorian sambas.” terested in having people respond to the Oddly enough, Varone said he came work,” he said, “and I don’t even care what across these recordings while travelling on that response is. I mean, of course we al the N.Y. City subway. “There was this old ways want our work to be liked, but ... man with his cap standing in the subway when you go and see any kind of artwork... with his little alto saxophone and his little there’s no right or wrong way to under Casio cassette player selling tapes of him stand it. So if people are turned on by the self playing these little tunes. So I bought work, that’s great. If it repels them, that’s two of them and now we have a new cool, too.” piece.” In all of his work, Varone maintains that The duet the company will perform, good technique and emotional intensity “Home” — in which Varone and dancer/ are equally important. As for a tight cho choreographer Maiy Govern examine a re Man in Motion reographic structure, he says, “IPs really lationship — has been called sad, angry, important so I can tear it apart. I think you moving and even painful. The Village need to have a certain formalism in order Voice noted, “both choreographers use Doug Varone Revives a Genre to destroy it — or to understand how to.” gesture and movement with the greatest “I think the work is really accessible to economy and acumen to detail the psy people that wouldn’t ordinarily go to mod chology of the situation.” By Traci Rossman em dance concerts because it really is ab In “Home” and other works, Varone out people.” has chosen to combine dance and theatri gesture, through standing still,” he comes veiy violent at the end, almost to the He added, "It’s taken me six years to get cal performance. Why not just stick to explained. point where the stage stops breathing.” to this point where I feel like I’ve washed a dance? “Force Majeur” is loosely based on im Varone said that one of the toughest lot of influences out of my work, and that’s “I’m really interested in creating work ages in Herman Broch’s novel The Spell, challenges in choreographing “Force Ma exciting. For the first time, I’m presenting that has a whole realm of experiences, Varone said. He described its impact as jeur” was “to create a community that an evening that I’m really happy with, that whether it’s through movement, through “devastating” and added, “the work be didn’t exist anywhere in the universe,” a is mine from beginning to end.” ENCO RE s ta ff Okayama's Contributors______________________ Claire Davies ‘Touch & Go’ Denis Faye Joanna Frazier Originality Highlights Work A.J. Goddard Eric Kaufman There are artists, who, by their nature, shun the words A nna K ent that flock together to describe them. Keisho Okayama, Christian Lincoln whose work is now showing at the College of Creative Ted M ills Studies, is one of these artists. Traci Rossman I am not talking about struggling for some illusive in J. Christian Whalen tent of the artist, but knowing the artist so well, through his art, that passing off a few adjectives seems inadequate. Assistant Editor__________________ His paintings speak to our inner lives and our deepest emotional remembrances. Pax Wassermann Okayama’s work is unpretentious; it lacks the dogma of excessive labor obvious in so many artists who do not E d ito r_____________________________ know when to stop working. In a sense, this “touch and Brian Banks go” style — that only leaves marks when necessary— re minds us we are essentially complete the way we are, and Keisho Okayama’s “Ozoni Knows,” that striving for completion can be an illusory endeavor. featured in the Creative Studies exhibit. The fact that none of the paintings have frames, and the canvasses look like they were bunched up in the back of of the compositions. He paints what he feels on the can his trunk until they arrived, does not pilfer an ounce of the vas, and then walks away. CAN YOU work’s integrity. Each piece has a face, giving the viewer a pervading Where he does threaten his style (as in “Central Figure sense of humanity in the squarish, white gallery. In With Two Attendant Figures” and “You and Me”) is with “Weeping Face” and “Antique Figure” the viewer has the the very trance-like attentiveness that makes the work trenchant awareness of being understood, and of being READ THIS? strong. He is almost over-reaching, beyond a technical received. equilibrium, to get to the emotional content of the sub It is these faces that remind us of Miro’s simple line, the Then you can read a book, too... ject. It is mainly a clash of color, battling the theme for colors of Kandinsky and his application is not unlike and review it for ENCORE. We’re attention. Chagall’s. Yet, they are uniquely Okayama’s vision, a vis looking for book reviews, so come Okayama responds to life with large spontaneous ion that seems universal at its core. movements that seem to emanate from a deep prescience. The show, appearing in the College of Creative Stu down to the Nexus and ask for There is a fine accord in this seemingly discordant work. dies Art Gallery, runs through October 18. Brian or Pax. Then read, then It is achieved by a meditative layering and superimposing —Christian Lincoln write, then go do something else. Icore views Thursday, October 10,1991 3 A BU Y 1 -G E T 1 Damn Good Cheese FREE! 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