(373) Lar Lubovitch, internationally renowned choreographer
On today's episode of 'Conversations On Dance', we are joined by internationally renowned choreographer Lar Lubovitch. We talk to Lar about his late start in dance, the benefits of creating works on his company and the differences in the creative process for the dozens of commissions he received over decades whether for the most respected ballet companies in the world, musical theater or ice dancing. If you're in the New York area, come celebrate Lar's career this December 3rd at the Guggenheim Works & Process presentation 'Lar Lubovitch at 80: Art of the Duet', which will feature duets Lar choreographed throughout his career. Tickets are available at guggenheim.org/initiatives/works-process.
Complexions at the Joyce Nov. 14 - Nov 26: https://www.joyce.org/performances/complexions-contemporary-ballet
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TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was generated automatically. It’s accuracy may vary.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:00:45]:
I'm Rebecca King Ferraro.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:00:46]:
And I'm Michael Sean Breeden, and you're listening to Conversations on Dance. On today's episode of Conversations on Dance, we are joined by internationally renowned choreographer Lar Lubovich. We talked to Lar about his late start in dance, the benefits of creating works on his own company, and the differences in the creative process for the dozens of commissions he received over decades, whether for the most respected ballet companies in the world, musical theater or even ice dancing. If you're in the New York area, come celebrate Lar's career this December 3 at the Guggenheim works and process presentation Lar Lubovich at 80 Art of the Duet, which will feature duet's Lar choreographed throughout his career. Tickets are available@guggenheim.org. Initiatives, works, process.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:01:36]:
Lar, thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. There's so much to talk about. And of course, we want to get a little bit of background on you to get a wider view of what brought you into the dance world to begin with. So maybe we could just hear a story about how you got the sort of dance bug. What made you want to come into dance to begin with.
Lar Lubovitch [00:02:00]:
Oh, gosh. You're asking me to go back to the Dark Ages.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:02:05]:
Right from the beginning.
Lar Lubovitch [00:02:07]:
I actually danced as a child, just intuitively, just spontaneously whenever there's music playing. And I started at a very early age, and I got nicknamed a dancer as a kid. And I really didn't know a profession existed that called to that particular idiosyncrasy until I was in college at the University of Iowa, where I was an art major and a gymnast, and I saw a dance company for the first time. Actually, it was the Jose limone company. And when I saw it, it had the feel of a revelation that it was what I was meant to do. So I was thunderstruck and pretty much changed my life from that moment forward.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:02:53]:
Where did you grow up, then? Did you grow up in Iowa, or were you just attending university there?
Lar Lubovitch [00:02:58]:
In Chicago.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:03:00]:
In Chicago. Okay. You didn't have any interaction or experience seeing a dance performance until that moment at University of Iowa?
Lar Lubovitch [00:03:13]:
That's right. I really didn't. I came from a family of basically hardworking people who weren't very exposed to the arts or inclined to guide us towards it.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:03:27]:
And then from there, what was the next steps for you? You found that there is a way that you can pursue this professionally. What was the next steps that you took to really get going on that path?
Lar Lubovitch [00:03:37]:
Well, just to back up a little bit as a gymnast, a woman came to watch the team working out and asked if anyone was interested in dancing. This was actually and I was always interested in dancing. I didn't know exactly what it meant, but I said, sure, me, take me. She actually was in modern dance and she was teaching modern dance. And so I began working with her and realizing what dance was. And then she took me to see this performance. We went backstage after the performance of Le Mone Company to ask what I could do to pursue this. And I was advised to go to a summer dance program which was at that time called the American Dance Festival in Connecticut College.
Lar Lubovitch [00:04:25]:
It still exists to this time. It's a huge important dance program this summer in Durham, North Carolina now, but I did go there to find out more seriously what dance was. And from there they told me I could audition in New York for the Juilliard School and I'd been college for one year, so I was interested in continuing my college education. And so I auditioned with Juilliard and was accepted. And that began the serious part of being a real dancer.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:04:55]:
Did you then have an idea, obviously that's a pretty quick turnaround from being obviously physically active but not a dancer, and then to be getting accepted into Juilliard, which is a hugely prestigious program. Did you have an idea then that you were talented or were you just kind of going along this path without really thinking or overthinking rather?
Lar Lubovitch [00:05:17]:
I don't think the word talented was in my mind. I wouldn't have known how to answer that question if it was asked. It was just something that I did that I was clearly adept at and enjoyed on a very deep level. It was a very freeing thing. And so I just walked towards whatever path opened that took me there. But I didn't have any idea yet what talent meant or at level I would be working. It turns out I was quite natural and took to the more serious aspects of dance and dance training very easily. With gymnastics training behind me, I was.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:05:56]:
Wondering how that kind of helped you once you got into formal training classes. I mean, there's people in there that are talking about the names of the steps that you weren't familiar with yet, that sort of thing, and the structure of class you're not familiar with. How did that background in gymnastics really help you to kind of catch yourself up to speed?
Lar Lubovitch [00:06:14]:
Well, I was physically fit and ready to attempt to do those things. And when I began dancing, I was just copying people around me. What they did, I did. It was all a process of discovery, really. I knew so little about it, which many years later I was grateful for because I carried no preconceived notions into dance or choreography. So that I was kind of free to invent in my own way without having inflected upon by information. I was choreographing from time. I was three or four years old when I saw dance come through the first time.
Lar Lubovitch [00:06:55]:
What I realized is that I was a choreographer and I didn't have to be a dancer for a number of years first to find out what that was so that I could pursue choreography. But my intent right from the get go was to choreograph. It was art and movement put together. Art and gymnastics I did best, most. So it seemed very clear to me that was my destiny when we were at that time.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:07:24]:
Right. I think that that's super interesting that the way you pinpointed that the lack of preconceived notion about what choreography should be or your own judgments in that way aided you in becoming a choreographer. Because I think my own background I went to the School of American Ballet for years, and you have boundsteen on a pedestal. So for me, it discouraged me from even I was like, well, what do I have to offer? This is a genius. So for you, you were kind of untethered to that sort of, I guess, maybe self judgment. You said you were making dances from the time you were three or four years old. But what were some of the first times that you had an opportunity to build work that maybe garnered you attention or where you started to realize this was something you could do?
Lar Lubovitch [00:08:16]:
Well, I became a dancer first, of course, and was the opportunity to attempt choreography. I really didn't try it while I was at Juilliard or for the first few years I was in the profession. But then the hunger became strong. I was in a dance company, a very good company, very good dancers with really bad choreography to do. But a company full of extremely advanced artists is the Harkness Ballet. And doing all those bad dances but watching all those great dancers turn it into something much better than it really was gave me a real hunger for making dances. So it's when I was in the Harkness Ballet, which was in 1968, she was there from 1965, in 1968, decided to take a leave of absence and present a concert, which is kind of the way people did it in those days. They just sort of debuted by creating something and opening the door and see who would come to see it.
Lar Lubovitch [00:09:16]:
The dance world, much less stretched, much less broad world. That time and the dance explosion had not happened yet. This was just a few years before it. So I did that, I got a theater and saved my money and put on three dances, and that launched it, and it received a great deal of attention right away.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:09:43]:
Had you gotten a chance to flex your choreographic muscles at Juilliard at all? Was that part of some of your.
Lar Lubovitch [00:09:49]:
Curriculum there as a student? Yes. I mean, I had choreography class with Anthony Tudor, who to this time, I consider my absolute most potent influences and whose relationship to music and time and space is very much part of my own work. And also I had choreography with Anasocalo, who did very tortured, dramatic, character driven work. So in classes with them, of course, we did studies and exercises.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:10:24]:
According to your bio, you took some classes with very iconic people at Juilliard. Martha Graham. You already mentioned Tudor and Limone. Tell us just a little bit what that was like, having all of these iconic and when you're young, too, I feel like sometimes you're not quite aware yet of maybe who these people are. Was that something you understood? What was this like at this time for you?
Lar Lubovitch [00:10:47]:
In actual effect? My very first dance class ever was with Martha Graham. I didn't know it. I didn't know who she was. I had no baggage whatsoever. As I said, I'd gone to this American dance festival on the advice of dancers that I had seen in Lemon Company. And my very first class, at 09:00, A.m., a woman in a black kimono walked in with sort of inky black hair and a very erect spine, and she said, and the whole class started doing these exercises, and I just sat in the back and copied them and got along. And I slowly found out as the summer progressed with whom I was learning, and that was Martha Graham. My second class was with Jose Limone, and after lunch, my third class was Alvin Ailey.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:11:42]:
Oh, my gosh.
Lar Lubovitch [00:11:45]:
My first day and my first teachers. And as strange that is, that's really what happened. It seems mythic now, but it actually went that's, wow.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:11:56]:
So was your level of fitness from being a gymnast enough to kind of get you through that? I'm thinking those must have been three pretty brutal classes. And having like, this is my first day of dance, and I just have three dance classes that are with these giants. But, I mean, that would be hard on a body. We think about dancers when you have a layoff and you come back, but you've been conditioning for your whole life, it still hurts. So, for you, for your first day, having that many classes and with these giants of dance, were you physically adept at handling that?
Lar Lubovitch [00:12:32]:
I was physically adept at copying and what I saw, and within very little time, my body aches in a way it had never ached before, and it actually hasn't stopped it accept a level of discomfort in exchange for doing what you believe in. And that's just part of the deal.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:12:55]:
Yeah. So how do you feel? And this might be something that you could only answer, like, maybe a little bit later in your career, but I wonder how working with these giants influenced you and your choreography, specifically, just having them near you, learning all these different techniques. But also, Michael was like you guys were talking about earlier, just being kind of untethered to anything specific when you started.
Lar Lubovitch [00:13:19]:
Well, the first things I saw, of course, had the most impact in a little while after being there. It was a Martha Graham company. At the end of each week, a major dance company would perform, and Martha Graham was early on. Then I realized with whom I was in the room, and one dance in particular moved me incredibly Primitive Mysteries, which is a very early dance of hers, a very simple, very profoundly simple piece with great emotional tension to it, had a huge impact on me. And then everybody I saw, consequently, the Jose Limone Company, of course, again, and some other companies, budding companies, the Alvin Ailey Company. I saw one of the first promises, revelations, actually, that summer Festival and a few others. And of course, those had enormous impact.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:14:15]:
Oh, I bet.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:14:16]:
Right. Can you tell us a little bit about what these first dances, like, when you put together your first concert, evening of dance? What kind of defined these works? What were you trying to say in your choreographic debut?
Lar Lubovitch [00:14:30]:
You I think I was say, look at me.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:14:32]:
Look at me. Well, it worked. Apparently.
Lar Lubovitch [00:14:38]:
I was accused by someone early on of having the ability to attract attention. It was a veiled kind of sort of damning praise. This person said that to me. It was that borderline.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:14:55]:
Was that a little shady?
Michael Sean Breeden [00:14:57]:
Yeah. Well, so from there, how did opportunities continue to build for you in that arena?
Lar Lubovitch [00:15:05]:
Very quickly, I did that first concert. I did three dances. I didn't know what I was doing, but in the sense of really having any plan of action at anything behind it except just intuitively charging forward and making and making and making and seeing what came out. But I was immediately invited to create dances on other companies. Six months later, I went to Israel to make a dance for the Backdoor Dance Company, which was a sister company, the Batsheba Dance Company. And a month after that, I was in Lisbon, Portugal, doing a dance for the Golbenkian Ballet. I had worked with the director of that company in the Harkness Ballet. He was a choreographer, and he came to see my concert and then invited me there.
Lar Lubovitch [00:15:53]:
So things took off very quickly.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:15:57]:
Wow. Did you ever feel at that time, like, how am I going to put out enough material? I always wonder that about choreographers. You have all these projects coming up, and were you ever worried, like, will I have enough inspiration? Will I have a way to create this much work?
Lar Lubovitch [00:16:12]:
Well, of course, when you make something out of nothing, you start in a pretty dark place. There's no light on whatsoever. And first idea create a little glow and then you see the space and can begin to sort of build on that first idea. But of course, anybody who creates will tell you that fear is a very powerful energy and it can either work against you or work for you, but it is just an energy, and that if you can use it as a catalyst, it can be quite helpful.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:16:43]:
I love right, maybe could we hear a little bit about your personal process, for instance? Well, at this point you're getting so many commissions and things are moving pretty quickly. Do you have a sort of catalog of music you want to choreograph to eventually that maybe you'll get to down the line? How do you decide where you're going to start? Basically, let's say at that age when you get the commission in Portugal, where you're just like, oh, I've been thinking about this piece of music and I need X dancers, or how do you kind of negotiate what the piece is going to be like?
Lar Lubovitch [00:17:23]:
Well, music really is where I have always begun, and that started very early on when I was very young and just sort of dancing around for no reason at all. I was much more serious about being an artist, and I was painting and drawing, and I spent a good deal of time making art as a kid, and I always had music playing, and so I was always sort of making art to music. And I had a music stored in my head by the time I became a choreographer, music I had just latched onto as an accompaniment to painting. And I had a lot of music stored up, all sorts of music. And right from the beginning, I was working wide range from classical to ethnic to pop or jazz. I had no particular specific kind of music. I think I said at that time that I think that from truth still had the music that made me want to dance.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:18:18]:
Now, kids these days can just discover music on Spotify or on their phones, and it's really easy to kind of search through and find something. What was your process like for finding these things that you were listening to while you were painting? Was it just around the house? Did you go out and search for things? How did that come about for you?
Lar Lubovitch [00:18:35]:
Well, it was really just on the radio. But when I became a choreographer to find music and at that time, it was a much more difficult process people have at their hands now is an incredible blessing considering what we have to go through. I would hang out for hours at record stores listening to music. There used to be little booths that they'd put you in and you could request hearing music. And if I found a composer whose sound I liked, then I listened to as much of that composer's music as I couldn't. I found one piece that seemed to capture my interest in its entirety.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:19:10]:
It's a different process, that's for sure.
Lar Lubovitch [00:19:13]:
Absolutely.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:19:15]:
Yeah. So at what point did you feel like starting your own company was really the logical step for continuing your own artistic development?
Lar Lubovitch [00:19:28]:
Well, I think that I felt at the beginning that the only way to find my real voice was to have my own company and to not work for other people. I had the opportunity to work for other people all the way along the way. But my heart was really in a group of dancers of my own choice who were there for the same reason to develop work together. And I felt pretty strongly that I don't know what the thinking is about it now, but somewhere along the line, when I was beginning, it was sort of tacitly understood that you had to find your own voice, you're an artist, and you had to be true to that voice. I was kind of dedicated to doing that right from the get go. And I thought I could only do that if I had a group of dancers with me developing in the same tempo and in the same direction.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:20:18]:
I wonder how your choreography ended up being different working with your dancers that you knew very well, as opposed to the things that you were going out and doing with other companies as a guest.
Lar Lubovitch [00:20:28]:
Well, quite different, because once I had a group of dancers that were working closely with me, it turns out it was a way of dancing that was coming out of me. It was a way of feeling about movement, a way of playing music on my body that was quite individual. And in time, the dancers I worked with adapted to and understood how to play the music on their bodies. In the same way, when you work with a company of strangers, you spend half time teaching them how to dance.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:20:57]:
Right.
Lar Lubovitch [00:20:58]:
It's a much more challenging process. And I don't think I ever did my best work on other companies. I think that I did as well as I could, and after a while, I realized it was better simply to take existing work and set it onto companies rather than trying to create them from scratch. I did both, but long run, it was better to work with my own.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:21:22]:
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Rebecca King Ferraro [00:22:10]:
Right. Yeah.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:22:11]:
Right. So from the first seed of an idea of, okay, I want to have my own company, what were the steps to get that into action?
Lar Lubovitch [00:22:20]:
Well, I had dancer friends looking for places to dance. There weren't that many places to dance in and there were a lot of young dancers that needed work and we just sort of gravitated towards each other and became a company. They were all my own age of a similar dance experience. I was always studying several modern and classical at the same time, plus enjoying ethnic dance studies as well, and people who had similar interests. We sort of gravitated to each other and became a company.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:22:59]:
And then what about the learning curve there for just the admin stuff that has to be done? All the behind the scenes work, the fundraising, all of that. What was that like for you as well?
Lar Lubovitch [00:23:10]:
Impossible. I had skill whatsoever in doing that and no comfort at all could be found in those things. I was neglectful about those things. And then at some point I realized that other people can do that for you.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:23:28]:
Great.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:23:29]:
Yeah.
Lar Lubovitch [00:23:31]:
I found people who do that on my behalf and they became part of building company as well. But I've never been comfortable about that and particularly the fundraising. I've always found it very humiliating to ask for money.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:23:46]:
Yeah, I understand. That would be the hardest part for me, for sure.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:23:49]:
Yeah. Never want to do that. Never in a million years. But of course it makes sense that you are in your element with your own dancers and developing and growing together. But just looking at your resume, you certainly didn't shy away from working with other companies. And it's a very impressive list. New york city ballet american ballet theater royal danish ballet paris opera stutt, netherlands dance theater ailey I mean, this is just kind of I don't know anyone else who has your resume, actually. That's wildly impressive.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:24:22]:
So what ways were you making it work with these dancers? I know you have to kind of come up to speed with everyone and get on the same page, and that is time consuming. But how did you find a groove that would work with these individual iconic companies?
Lar Lubovitch [00:24:43]:
So little of it is a result of having thought it through. It's much more the willingness, I dare say courage, to put yourself in an impossible situation and see if you can manage it. The tension, the pressure, the inspiration as well. Something has to happen. The result of all that tension is there's a release. And the release becomes whatever dance is possible under those circumstances. But it's not a process that's thought through in any detailed or thorough way. I know it sounds disingenuous to say that I've never really known what I was doing, but I stand by that situation in which I have to act, and I accept the tension that goes with it and use the tension to find release.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:25:46]:
I'm curious how the style of the dancers dancing at different companies also influenced you. Just to use examples from that list that Michael read. New York City Ballet versus American Ballet Theater. They have different trainings. How did that inspire you, maybe, like, work with them? And how did that maybe change the outcome of what you created?
Lar Lubovitch [00:26:08]:
Well, I certainly felt a need to move in their direction. I could never get them to dance this particular way that I had been concentrating on, and I was interested in seeing how it could look differently in their version than the one I had anticipated, and tried to be as generous as possible in allowing that to happen. Sometimes it's as much a way of dancing for dancers and other companies as a way of making a dance. You mentioned New York City Ballet, and they were used to balanchin and he had a way of making a dance, a certain process and a certain look when that dance was finished. And working with those dancers, with what they bring to the room, one feels compelled to try to work their way as well as to dance their way. So dances came out differently than they would have come out had I not been with them. I'm best judge of whether they were the best dancers. I've often felt they weren't.
Lar Lubovitch [00:27:10]:
But I'm hard on myself.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:27:13]:
I wonder too, because then you mentioned that you kind of decided, like, maybe in the future, when companies wanted to work with you, you wanted to bring existing works there. So what was that like? Would you send a repetitor on your behalf? Were you going to also coach? What did that start to look like once you started to shift into sending commissioning some of your current works?
Lar Lubovitch [00:27:34]:
Yeah, I always went myself because I was very interested in wanting to be a part of it, and very selfish, actually, about the opportunities to go to different companies in foreign countries should do it. Those experiences myself, insofar as my body was still able to do it, and then later, when I became less able physically, I started taking assistance with me. And now I do send two or three people to stage dancers, and then I come in at the end to coach.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:28:03]:
It nice, right. I'm wondering, since you're saying that you personally thought maybe these works weren't your strongest, and maybe that was owing to you not having the sort of depth of connection that you have with, of course, your own dancers. Did you ever take a work that, say, was commissioned for you elsewhere and then tinker with it with your own company afterwards? Or was it sort of like, dances are like butterflies and all that? Let it go.
Lar Lubovitch [00:28:33]:
No, you're right. I did exactly that. Dance back and do everything I could to enhance it, fulfill it.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:28:43]:
Right.
Lar Lubovitch [00:28:44]:
I did that. Any of the dances I'd made in my own company, I never quite left them alone. I was always trying to improve something or get something more right, as I put it, than I had gotten it. It's sort of an obsessive thing.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:29:01]:
I think that's interesting, though. It's very common. I mean, it's highly common for choreographers to do that, but it's different from you're not going to go back to a painting that you did ten years ago and start messing around with it. What is that like, to have your work just being this kind of living, breathing thing that you can continually alter?
Lar Lubovitch [00:29:28]:
Well, dance is like that for better, for worse. It only exists when it's happening. It's totally amorphous. It has no finished shape, it has no final look because it'll be different every single time you change one, you change the size of the stage, a different lighting designer, what have you. It's going to be a somewhat altered experience each time, better or worse, because as I say, it doesn't exist except when it's happening, which of course, we all know very well. And so you have the freedom to keep shaping it, but not the ownership of a finished product.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:30:07]:
Right.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:30:08]:
Let's talk about your foray into musical theater that started with into the woods. Can you tell us a little bit about how that opportunity came about?
Lar Lubovitch [00:30:16]:
The writer of into the woods, writer director James Lapine was a fan of Dance, and he knew dance quite well. And he had seen performance of mine at City Center, I believe, and they were casting back for a choreographer for the musical into the woods, and I simply got a phone call to meet with him one day. And that's how it began.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:30:40]:
Wow.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:30:41]:
What was that experience like for you then? I imagine you're so level headed. I imagine that even going into something that is a different world, that you're just very pragmatic about it. But there are highly different parameters in that sphere from, okay, you enter the studio with your own dancers and you can just create. So what was that like kind of adjusting to this new world in a way?
Lar Lubovitch [00:31:09]:
Very liberating because the buck didn't stop here. There was director's vision, and job was to make a dance that he would make. If he could make a dance, I love that gave a totally different motivation and drawing from a totally other source. And I love doing that. It was very liberating, not only because it was not my idea that had to be brought into fruition, but to go into someone else's head and find out their thinking and create for them about their work. I love doing. It. I always have loved doing that.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:31:50]:
I feel like that's a very dancer answer, because then the director then gives you notes right. And feedback on the choreography, which you probably never really get otherwise. Right. It's like you say, you're the one in the front of the room, you're making the decisions.
Lar Lubovitch [00:32:03]:
Absolutely. It's so opposite because in fact, very early on, I would never let people critique my work if I had showings. And I would say, can I tell you something? I said, no, no, thank you. You didn't. This was all in the spirit of finding my voice, sticking my voice, bad or good, and not letting it be altered or shaped by opinions, but totally different. And James Lepine is very particular and to the point where he really didn't know what he wanted to see until he saw it. So I would have to do a dance sequence or moving sequence over and over and over until it struck a chord in his imagination.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:32:49]:
This is kind of not off course, but I think it's a sweet story. That's reminded me talking about into the woods reminded me of our close. A teacher of ours. Susie Pilar is married to Chip Zion. Who's? The original Baker. She danced for Balancine and she said that he would come home panicked about the steps and they would rehearse them in the apartment together. But I remember her saying about know, the thing he was most nervous about is like the dancing, because that's not in his wheelhouse.
Lar Lubovitch [00:33:25]:
Oh, that's very funny. I never heard that before. And I didn't know he married Susan Pilar.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:33:31]:
Yeah, I love hearing that.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:33:35]:
I know. When I saw that, I was like, oh, this is so fun. Such a nice connection.
Lar Lubovitch [00:33:42]:
He would try it all. Yeah. Dance. Really? It was musical staging, which is a little different than dance.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:33:50]:
Right.
Lar Lubovitch [00:33:51]:
Because it's for non dancers, but finding the way for them to move to illustrate the music that made them comfortable and also satisfied the needs of the director's vision.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:34:02]:
Right. Can we talk a little bit about your foray into choreographing for ice dance thing? It sounds like speaking of people being game, you are game. You're just trying to kind of experience all that there is and just having another tool in your choreographic kit. And I think that's so brave and interesting. But what even inspired you to kind of delve into that?
Lar Lubovitch [00:34:29]:
Looking back on it and you speak of my resume, it all looks so strategic and so but really much of it was so arbitrary. And we all have far less control than we think about how our lives go, even on a daily basis. And I really let it take me. And if somebody asked me to work, I worked. I almost never said no because I was interested in stretching and testing and experienced different things. And similarly to way I got into the woods, john Curry, Olympic gold Medalist in men's ice skating from Britain had formed a ice skating dance company, and he was interested in stretching ice skating into an artistic form. And he came and got me. He had seen my work and he thought it looked as though it had a relationship to ice skating.
Lar Lubovitch [00:35:24]:
My work has been described as very curvaceous and lyrical, and that seemed to suit the other medium. And so John Curry asked me to make a piece for his company, and that started a series of ice pieces that I made for soloists, for Olympic skaters, as well as a couple full length ice dance specials for television.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:35:44]:
Wow. And so what was the learning curve like there? It's kind of like at the beginning for you, where you're just kind of seeing steps that are already in existence and then putting your own spin on it and not being tethered to anything specific. What was that like to kind of that's just such a different art form.
Lar Lubovitch [00:36:01]:
Well, the curious thing about ice skating is there are only about seven or eight steps.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:36:07]:
That's true.
Lar Lubovitch [00:36:09]:
And almost anything you do is an invention on ice if you're not working in the framework of competitive ice skating that requires these elements.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:36:18]:
Right.
Lar Lubovitch [00:36:19]:
So it was a chance to invent in a form that had not had that much invention applied to it, and it was just a chance to put myself in a situation, to see what came out, to see what could happen, and also a chance to relieve myself of the rules of dance. I had acquired, up to that point, my own company and the burden of having my own company and making dances for them just to be in another world. Each time I ventured elsewhere, though, whether it was Broadway or ice skating, I always wound up so glad to be back in the dance world. There's something about dancers, unlike people in other professions, that is unique and rare. There's an innocence, there's a commonality, there's a shared devotion to something, a to say it's religious, and it isn't religious, but it almost has that kind of fervor. And there's a camaraderie, there's a goodness.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:37:24]:
True. It's beautiful.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:37:27]:
I'm wondering if you could maybe just speak to, I guess, the arc of your choreographic career a little bit more, just how you feel you have changed as an artist and maybe what is also still fundamentally the same from that first concert that you put on.
Lar Lubovitch [00:37:47]:
Well, I've acquired technique. I acquired a lot of information about making a dance according to my own way of making a dance, so that when I in later times, I went through room to make a dance, I had information in advance, more or less, about how to go about it. It wasn't as deeply stabbing in the dark as it was at the beginning, but I always tried to dispel that information so that I could start from zero. There's a quality of not knowing which is a broader state of mind than knowing I know a few things, I know a number of things, but what I don't know is much, much broader. So I always try to get into I don't know how mind, even though it's a trick, so that I can dispense with all that acquired information and start from zero.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:38:48]:
Let's talk about the upcoming performances for Works in Process on December 3, where there will be a series of duets in honor of your 80th birthday. Tell us a little bit about what this program will be like and how you both chose, what duets will be shown and the dancers who will be involved.
Lar Lubovitch [00:39:06]:
Well, it turns out that I have been very adept at making duets. Again, it wasn't by intent, but as a result of what I've done, a great many duets have arisen and I enjoy doing duets. I like the parameters of forearms, four legs and everything you can do with it and torsos. Group work is the most difficult, the most challenging, the most threatening. But two people in a room together, you can really focus three minds in on something very special duets. Anyway, in the history of dance, it's almost always the duet that centers the moment of a dance. When everyone else leaves the stage and two people are left and they're about to make a statement together. It really captures the attention, imagination of everyone in the audience.
Lar Lubovitch [00:40:04]:
There's something about uniting two souls that everybody in their heart of hearts wants to see happen. It speaks to everyone's journey in life when those two people come together to make a statement as one. And it turns out they made a lot of duets. When the Works of Process directors Duke Daniel Carolyn Crons approached me to the program, I suggested a duet program because there seemed to be a lot of dancers around who duets of mine. It seemed available, having done so many.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:40:43]:
Well, and it's maybe a fun way to get lots of dancers involved. Right. There's many coming in from different places as we understand, correct?
Lar Lubovitch [00:40:50]:
Yes. We have two dancers from New York City Ballet that I've been working with, adrian Dancing Waring and Joseph Gordon, two spectacular dancers that I've choreographed to dance on. That was at Fall for Dance two seasons ago and dancers of my own company. Two dancers from San Francisco Ballet, Juan Montan. They were a wonderful magical dancer, dancing principal Joffrey Ballet doing a duet, Mothello, which was a big piece I did for Mackenball Theater and two dancers from Hubbard Street Dance, Chicago, learning a dance that I had done in that company some years ago. And a couple of dancers from Dallas, Texas, a company I work with currently called Bruce Wood Dance, an offshoot company made by a dancer, worked with me for many years.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:41:43]:
Great.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:41:44]:
How do you select repertoire even I guess it goes back to your first concert as well. How do you find balance within a program when you are selecting your own works to show an array of your own talents, of course, but also to give the audience a sort of arc for an evening.
Lar Lubovitch [00:42:03]:
I actually base it on the music. Quite right. There is an arc that's being sought and constructed, and for me, that arc really concerns the music and how to make each piece take us on the next step of the journey. And each music will elicit a different physical response just by vent of music being different, the dance will also be different.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:42:31]:
Right. I imagine that this evening is going to be very special for you, to have all these dancers come together. What does it mean to have this program as a part of Works in Process?
Lar Lubovitch [00:42:41]:
Well, gosh, it's humbling. I think probably one of the most privileged things I've enjoyed is that dancers seem to love to do my work. And that has been a great deal to me. And I think that probably is the underlying theme of this. All these dancers who've done my work that really share with me the enjoyment of making the work and doing the work, but that dancers enjoy being in my work. They love to do my work. That's very meaningful to me.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:43:18]:
Oh, I bet. Yeah.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:43:20]:
That's so beautiful. So obviously you always stay busy. What's next in the pipeline for you?
Lar Lubovitch [00:43:29]:
Well, I'm choreographing much less and trying to choreograph only where there's an opportunity to do something I really want to do or that I haven't done and teaching much more. At the University of California in Irvine with a very fancy title as Distinguished Professor. Great. I'm there for several weeks at a time each year, not full time, and staging my dances for the students as well and then choreographing as the opportunities arise. I don't think ideas shifted that much that if anybody asks me, pretty much I'll do it.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:44:12]:
You're always game.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:44:14]:
Yes.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:44:16]:
Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It was so wonderful to chat with you and we hope that everyone will come out to see that great program for Works in Process. So thank you so much.
Lar Lubovitch [00:44:26]:
Thank you.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:44:27]:
Thank you.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:44:28]:
Lar.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:44:35]:
Conversations on Dance is part of the Acas Creator network. For more information, visit conversationsondancepod pod.com.