"Praised by the New York Times as “one of the ten best choreographers in the world,” Lar Lubovitch was born in Chicago and educated at the University of Iowa and the Juilliard School in New York. His teachers at Juilliard included renowned ballet masters Antony Tudor, who founded the London Ballet; José Limón, who developed what is now known as the Limón technique; Anna Sokolow, whose work is known for its social justice focus and theatricality; and Martha Graham, whose style, the Graham technique, reshaped American dance.
Lubovitch danced in numerous modern, ballet, jazz, and ethnic dance companies before forming the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in New York City in 1968. Over the course of 56 years, the company has gained an international reputation as one of America’s top dance companies and has been called a “national treasure” by Variety. Celebrated for both its choreographic excellence and its unsurpassed dancing, the company, under his direction, has created more than 120 dances, and has performed throughout the United States and in more than 40 foreign countries. His dances have been performed by American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, among other distinguished dance companies.
Lubovitch’s work is renowned for its musicality, rhapsodic style, and sophisticated formal structures. His radiant, highly technical choreography and deeply humanistic voice have been praised around the globe. His Othello: A Dance in Three Acts (created for American Ballet Theatre in a three-way collaboration with the San Francisco Ballet and the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company) was featured on PBS’s Great Performances and earned an Emmy Award nomination.
Lubovitch made his Broadway debut in 1987 with the musical staging for the Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine musical Into the Woods, for which he received a Tony Award nomination. In 1993 he choreographed the highly praised dance sequences for the Broadway show The Red Shoes. The final ballet from that show joined the repertories of American Ballet Theatre and the National Ballet of Canada, and he received the 1993–1994 Astaire Award from the Theater Development Fund for his work.
In addition to his work in theater, film, and television, Lubovitch has also made a significant contribution to the advancement of choreography in the field of ice-dancing. He has created concert dances for Olympic gold medalists John Curry, Peggy Fleming, and Dorothy Hamill and has choreographed a full-length ice-dancing version of The Sleeping Beauty, starring Olympic medalists Robin Cousins and Rosalynn Sumners. In 1987, he conceived Dancing for Life, which took place at Lincoln Center’s New York State Theater (now known as the David H. Koch Theater). It was the first response by the dance community to the AIDS crisis, raising over $1 million.
Over his expansive career Lubovitch has been recognized as a master in his field. In 2011, the versatile choreographer was named a Ford Fellow by United States Artists and he received the Dance/USA Honors, the dance field’s highest award. In 2012, he received the Prix Benois de la Danse for Choreography for his dance, Crisis Variations, at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Lubovitch was presented with the American Dance Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Juilliard School, and appointed a distinguished professor of dance at the University of California, Irvine, in 2013 and 2014, respectively. In 2015, he was named “one of America’s irreplaceable dance treasures” by the Dance Heritage Coalition, and in 2016, he received the ADF Scripps Award for Lifetime Achievement and also the Dance Magazine Award. In 2018 Lubovitch was honored with the Martha Graham Award."
Othello by
"Othello was originally produced for the stage by American Ballet Theatre and San Francisco Ballet in collaboration with Lar Lubovitch Dance Company."
Momentos, marimba, airs by