While the first day of classes for the Fall semester was officially August 28th, a select group of Mason dancers had already been on campus and in the studio for ten days learning a work from modern dance master Doug Varone. Though not unusual for our dancers to be working during a holiday break, this guest artist residency had a particular sense of urgency, as our young artists will be performing at the Center for the Arts with Doug Varone and Dancers on November 18th as part of the Great Performances at Mason Series. This is an unprecedented opportunity for our students to be onstage with one of our country’s preeminent modern dance troupes. The Mason Dance Company will be dancing this excerpt of in the shelter of the fold in our Gala Concert March 23rd and 24th, in the Concert Hall, and on March 25th at the Hylton Performing Arts Center. Our relationship with Varone goes back a number of years. We have performed several works of his in past seasons, but this is the first time our students will be onstage and integrated into a professional performance with an artist’s own company. Varone company member Xan Burley staged the work in an intensive rehearsal process and was quite pleased with our dancers’ abilities, focus, and professional preparation. Varone’s choreography is challenging in every way: complicated, physically virtuosic movement, musicality, spacially complex, and deeply detailed and dynamically textured, as well as emotionally resonant. Please join us for Doug Varone and Dancers, featuring the Mason Dance Company, on November 18th in the Concert Hall at the Center for the Arts. Tickets are available now at the Center for the Arts box office.
—By Mason School of Dance