dancers
OCTOBER 28, 2008

40th ANNIVERSARY SEASON

PERFORMANCES NEXT WEEK

AT CITY CENTER

40th anniversary season to culminate in star-studded gala evening on November 5th

City Center performances to include hit dances from all 4 decades of the company

Anniversary tour to reach 23 major cities

Lubovitch retrospective sells out at Dance Theater Workshop

40th anniversary season to culminate in star-studded gala evening on November 5th

Jay Franke, Rasta Thomas and Sean Stewart  in Little Rhapsodies.  Photo: Nan Melville.
Jay Franke, Rasta Thomas and Sean Stewart
in Little Rhapsodies.  Photo: Nan Melville.

The Lubovitch company is celebrating its 40th anniversary season with a jam-packed year of touring (23 cities in the U.S. and abroad), as well as a momentous New York season of performances at City Center.  The high-water mark of the entire anniversary year will occur on Opening Night, Wednesday November 5th (the night after the presidential election).  Following the performance at City Center, Lar and the dancers will join patrons and celebrity friends of the company in a star-studded gala dinner at the University Club, a national landmark.

Among Lar’s artistic collaborators on the benefit committee are:  F. Murray Abraham, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Dave Brubeck, Constantin Costa-Gavras, Kurt Elling, James Lapine, Terrence McNally and Bernadette Peters.  The opening night gala honors the company’s dancers, past and present.

The festivities begin at City Center, with a performance at 7 pm and a champagne toast in the patron’s lounge during intermission.  The program spanning 40 years includes:  Concerto Six Twenty-Two, North Star, the premiere performance of Jangle, Whirligogs, and Dvorak Serenade.  Following the performance, special transportation has been arranged to whisk patrons off to the celebration at the University Club, where they will mix and mingle with Lar and the dancers.

Gala tickets are available through NYCharities.org.  Patron tickets are $750 (individual) or $7,500 (for a table of ten), and Benefactor tickets are $1,250 (individual) or $12,500 (for a table of ten).  All but $250 of each ticket is fully tax-deductible.  If you have questions about the Gala or would rather place your order over the phone with a company representative, please call 212-221-7909.

Click here to purchase your tickets for the Opening Night Gala Performance.

City Center performances to include hit dances from all 4 decades of the company

Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in Little Rhapsodies.  Photo: Christopher Duggan at Jacob's Pillow.
Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in Little Rhapsodies.
Photo: Christopher Duggan at Jacob's Pillow. 

FOUR MAJOR REVIVALS FEATURED

    From November 5th—8th, City Center audiences have the opportunity to see a total of seven dances by Lubovitch, including four that have been reconstructed this year as part of a retrospective look back at Lar’s four decades of creativity.  The four revivals are:

    1) Whirligogs was one of the first dances created by Lar.  Only 25 years old in 1969, Lar created the dance just a year after the company’s inaugural performance.  Set against Luciano Berio’s phantasmagorical sound score, Whirligogs (subtitled Knots, Tangles, Confusion) is a frenzied, sardonic, and grotesque dance that comments on man’s futile and sometimes comic inability to address the dilemmas of contemporary life.  An early staple of the company's world-wide tours, it has not been performed by the company in more than 20 years.
 
    2) North Star provides a stark contrast with Whirligogs.  Set to Philip Glass’s composition of the same title, the dance responds to the subtle complexity of Glass’s abstract score, creating a mesmerizing, undulating work.  It is one of the company’s most popular works.

    3) Arguably the most celebrated of Lubovitch’s dances is his 1986 masterwork Concerto Six Twenty-Two, set to the music of Mozart.  It is a lyrical, deeply human dance.  In the midst of an otherwise joyful, playful and exhilarating dance is an austere duet between two men.  While these men could be friends, lovers or brothers, their duet - tender, vulnerable and supportive - was of a depth that had rarely if ever been presented onstage prior to this dance.  Premiering in the mid-1980s during the height of the AIDS crisis, the dance had a particular resonance in relation to that struggle, but it is a work that continues to speak very directly to audiences of today.

    4) Men’s Stories is Lubovitch’s layered and athletic homage to the virtuosic male dancer.  Set to an original score and audio collage by Scott Marshall, it features nine of Lubovitch’s elegant and powerful men in an introspective and probing look into the psyche.

    These four revivals are among the seven works being offered during the company’s 40th anniversary season November 5-8.  To order tickets, contact CityTix at 212-581-1212, or

Click here to purchase your tickets for City Center performances now!

Anniversary tour to reach 23 major cities

Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in Dvorak Serenade.  Photo: Ben Rudick at Jacob's Pillow.
Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in Dvorak Serenade.
Photo: Ben Rudick at Jacob's Pillow.

 

SUMMER 2008: LAUNCH OF COMPANY’S INTERNATIONAL ANNIVERSARY TOUR

    This past summer, the Lubovitch company returned to the road - after focusing exclusively on creating, performing and teaching in New York City for the past 13 years.  The first stops in this season-long tour included three dance festivals: American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina (June 26-28), a week at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Massachusetts (July 2-6), and the Chicago Dancing Festival (August 18-20).  The Chicago festival was launched last year by Lubovitch (a Chicago native) together with fellow-Chicagoan (and Lubovitch company member) Jay Franke.

    The company’s return to the American Dance Festival was a highlight of the Festival’s 75th anniversary season.  The company performed Concerto Six-Twenty Two, sharing a bill with the Martha Graham Dance Company.  Referring to the central duet in Concerto Six Twenty-Two, reviewer Susan Broili of the Herald-Sun said that the “the duet has the power to bring tears, and once again, tears came.”

    The company’s return to Jacob’s Pillow also featured Concerto Six-Twenty Two, as well as two of Lubovitch’s latest creations, Dvorak Serenade and Little Rhapsodies.  Tresca Weinstein, reviewer for the Times Union wrote that the evening “was as light and sweet as a dollop of whipped cream on a slice of birthday cake.”

    Last year’s very successful launch of the Chicago Dancing Festival prompted the Chicago Tribune to bestow its “Chicagoan of the Year” honor on Lubovitch.  This year (the festival's second year), the festival was even more successful, growing from a single evening event into a three-day, multi-venue affair, drawing an audience of more than 12,000.

    The company’s anniversary season tour will continue following the November 5—8 City Center season.   A future edition of this e-newsletter will preview the company’s upcoming appearances around the country.  Stay tuned!

Click here to find out when you can catch the company on tour!

Lubovitch retrospective sells out at Dance Theater Workshop

Marimba.  Photo: Louise Gund
Marimba.
Photo: Louise Gund

 

    If you managed to see the Lubovitch company at Dance Theater Workshop earlier this month, you were one of the lucky ones!   All four of the performances were virtually sold out.  What you might not have known is that those performances were a bit of a homecoming for Lubovitch.

    As a young artist starting his career, Lar gave some of his company’s earliest performances on that same plot of real estate in Chelsea.  In 1969 and 1970, Lubovitch converted an empty warehouse at 219 West 19th Street into a performance space for his fledgling company.  Later, another young dance organization – Dance Theater Workshop – took residence in the space and has been there ever since.

    The company’s performance earlier this month was the first time that the Lubovitch company has performed at 219 West 19th Street, since those early performances nearly 40 years ago.  It seemed particularly appropriate for the company to be performing several of Lar’s most celebrated works from those early years, including Cavalcade, North Star and Marimba.   These three now-classic dances were among the first ever created to Minimalist music.  Even now, 30 years after their creation, The New York Times described the performance as having “the invigorating air that often accompanies exploration.”

    The occasion was particularly enriched by Peggy Baker, a lead dancer from the 1970’s and 80’s who led a pre-performance conversation on October 2nd.  You can still watch a video of her fascinating talk by clicking here: DTW's Conversation with Peggy Baker


Lar Lubovitch Dance Company

Mission:  The Lubovitch company was created to realize the artistic vision of Lar Lubovitch, one of the foremost contemporary choreographers in the United States.  The company exists: (1) to create new work; (2) to perform those works (and facilitate the performance of those works by others) both in our home base of New York City and around the world; and (3) to teach people of all ages, ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds, in order to increase awareness and appreciation of dance.

History:  Over the past 40 years, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company has gained a reputation as one of the world's leading modern dance companies and has performed in virtually every state of the US and in more than 30 foreign countries.  Lar Lubovitch has been cited by The New York Times as "one of the ten best choreographers in the world," and the company has been called a "national treasure" by Variety.  The company is primarily focused on the creation of new dances, sometimes in collaboration with other top companies.

Contact:  The Lubovitch company is located at 229 West 42nd Street, New York NY 10036.  You can reach us at (212) 221-7909 or Lubovitch@aol.com.  Or visit our website at www.lubovitch.org.

Support:  Programs of the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company are funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, as well as by American Mastepieces: Dance, Irene Diamond Fund, Brooke Garber & Daniel Neidich Fund, Harkness Foundation for Dance, Joyce Theater Foundation, McMullan Family Foundation, National Dance Project, Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation, A. Woodner Fund and numerous additional generous individuals, corporations and foundations.

Memberships:  The Lubovitch company is a member of Dance/USA, Dance/NYC, ART/NY, Americans for the Arts and the Arts & Business Council of New York.