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The Lar Lubovitch Dance Company Celebrates its 45th Anniversary at The Joyce (DanceUpCloseVideo)

By Christine Jowers/Follow @cmmjowers on Instagram
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Published on October 3, 2013
Photo of "Men's Stories:A Concerto in Ruin" by Rose Eichenbaum

Lar Lubovitch Reflects on Dance and Truth.

Christine Jowers is @dancenthusiast and @ChristineJowers on twitter

The Lar Lubovitch Dance Company will celebrate its 45th anniversary with a two-week engagement at The Joyce Theater running Tuesday, October 8th through Sunday, October 20th. On the first week of the run we will be fortunate enough to experience Men’s Stories: A Concerto in Ruin. This lucious dance created 13 years ago for a cast of nine men is set to a haunting original score by Scott Marshall.

Lar Lubovitch On : The Beginning of His Career, His Relationship to Music, and The Uncomfortable World of Creation

Last week, I caught Lar Lubovitch and the men of the company in rehearsal reviewing lifts and positions and agreeing (or gently disagreeing) over elements of the choreography. All the while Lubovitch alternated between singing the score and running into the dance to fine tune.

I was swept away not only by the magnetism of the movement and the gifted dancers before me, but also by the obvious sense that this calm rehearsal studio, located above the manic swarm of tourists and the vagaries of Time Square, was the center of the world for these people (and hence for me.) It is a privilege to be invited into a family of artists to share the intimate space where they bring dances to life. The experience was made all the more rich by being able to speak with Lar Lubovitch about his lifetime of work and consummate belief in dance.

Lar Lubovitch On: Giving and Taking Advice About Choreography

“I try to revisit works I believe in,” says Lubovitch, when we speak of the revivals that will appear in the company’s programs this season. “I’ve done an awful lot of dances -- about 120, I think -- and I don’t really think of many of them as worth revisiting, so the few that I bring back I bring back because I care to see them again.” 

One such dance, The Time Before The Time After (1970), a duet set to Stravinsky’s Concertino for String Quartet, has not been performed by the company in 30 years. “The original title was, The Time Before The Time After After The Time Before, but I’ve come to my senses,” he laughs.

“Now I only call it The Time Before the Time After. The title indicates a relationship that is caught in an obsessive circle that always returns to its central nuisance -- its central problem -- very neurotic. That happened to have been the first duet I ever choreographed. I am bringing it back for this 45th anniversary season for that reason and that reason alone. My duet work became quite notable over the years and I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what I was doing intuitively back when I didn’t know much about my craft.”

Lar Lubovitch On: The Duet from Concerto Six Twenty-Two and Responding To AIDs

When asked if he could trace any specific periods over his years of making dances, Lubovitch replied that he didn’t see his past work so much in terms of “periods” but did see certain pieces as personal watershed moments. He describes these dance pieces as, “keynote moments...realizations or urgent needs that finally rose to the surface allowing me to take a leap within my own terms, a leap of my own imagination.”

The central duet from Concerto Six Twenty-Two (1986), set to Mozart’s Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, was one of Lubovitch’s watershed moments. He is always quick to qualify these moments as personal, and not defining for the larger dance world. “I believe I have always been on the side of dance but not the center of it, just kind of following my own step and doing work that had meaning to me...”

His tender and supportive dance for two men, created at the height of the AIDs crisis has become emblematic for the fight against the disease. “I didn’t know it would have that impact.”  

Enjoy A Dance Enthusiast Minute of Truth Telling From Lar Lubovitch