NYU Skirball will present the NYC premiere of Doug Varone’s “To My Arms/Restore,” a two-part work featuring eight dancers, accompanied by live music by the 100-member MasterVoices and the New York Baroque Incorporated (NYBI) on Friday, March 22 & Saturday, March 23.The entire evening will be conducted by orchestrator and Tony Award-winner Ted Sperling. “To My Arts/Restore” embodies Varone’s decades-long choreographic fascination between the deeply emotional and the immensely physical.

“To My Arms” features eight dancers and a score of Handel arias sung by five soloists, accompanied by musicians from the period-instrument orchestra New York Baroque Incorporated. The piece builds a landscape of love and loss, evoking a strange otherworld of intimacy.

In stark contrast, Restore’s visceral, unsparing movement explodes across the stage, revealing a new, wide-open terrain of physicality. The MasterVoices Chorus will join the dancers, orchestra and soloists in performing Handel Remixed, the Baroque piece Dixit Dominus layered with electronic beats by Festival Voices and composer Nico Bentley to create a sound world more commonly heard in clubs around the globe.
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Doug Varone is the Artistic Director of Doug Varone and Dancers. Since 1986, the company has toured major venues across the U.S. Europe, Asia, and South America. Stages include The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Joyce Theater, London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Moscow’s Stanislavsky Theater, Buenos Aires’ Teatro San Martin, the Venice Biennale, among others. In opera, he is in demand as both director and choreographer and his numerous theater credits include Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional theaters across the country. www.dovadance.org

This season celebrates Artistic Director Ted Sperling’s 10th anniversary with MasterVoices, continuing and building the group’s mission to spark greater human connections through musical storytelling and unforgettable performances. For MasterVoices, Doug Varone has created choreographies for its stagings of Kurt Weill; Ira Gershwin and Moss Hart’s Lady in the Dark; and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, which he also directed. With a chorus of 100+ mem¬bers from all walks of life and a diverse roster of world-class solo¬ists and directors/designers, MasterVoices performs masterpieces in concert, opera, and musical theater, as well as rarely heard gems deserving a fresh look and listen.www.mastervoices.org

New York Baroque Incorporated (NYBI) is a conductorless orchestra of period instruments based in New York City. With a passion for breathing life into 17th-and 18th-century repertoires, the orchestra delivers vibrant and informed performances while nurturing dynamic collaborations between historical performance and contemporary composers. NYBI has shared the stage with renowned soloists and has graced prestigious venues across the United States.

NYU Skirball is located in the heart of Greenwich Village, historically a center of resistance, dissent and free thinking. NYU Skirball’s programing reflects this history and embraces today’s renegade artists and companies, presenting works that aim to engage, provoke and inspire audiences. NYU Skirball is NYC’s home for cutting-edge performance, artistic research, and discourse, holding close to James Baldwin’s dictum that “artists are here to disturb the peace.” The 800-seat theatre provides a home for internationally renowned artists, innovators, and thinkers and presents ground-breaking events ranging from re-inventions of the classics to cutting-edge premieres, in genres ranging from dance, theatre and performance arts to comedy, music and film.

NYU Skirball’s programs are made possible in part with support from the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and by Howard Gilman Foundation; FUSED (French U.S. Exchange in Dance), a program of FACE Foundation in partnership with Villa Albertine; Collins Building Services; Korean Cultural Center New York; Van Cleef & Arpels; Marta Heflin Foundation; and Harkness Foundation for Dance, as well as our valued donors through memberships, commissioning, and Stage Pass Fund support.