dancers

Lubovitch Company opens

TONIGHT

at City Center

with a WORLD PREMIERE

and four Masterworks

from 40 Years

Celebrate the beginning of a new era!

 _________________________________________________

World premiere of JANGLE to be featured along-side other Lubovitch masterworks

Jangle premieres on November 5th, the opening night of the company’s 40th anniversary City Center season.  Lar’s newest work was previewed without costumes at the Joyce Theater last May, as part of the theater's 25th anniversary gala.  Now costumed by Tony-Award-winning designer Ann Hould-War, the work is set to premiere at City Center in its full conception.  Ann Hould-Ward has costumed ten previous dances for the Lubovitch company and has received numerous awards for her designs on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in film productions, including the Tony for "Beauty and the Beast," as well as the American Theatre Wing’s Design Award for “Best Costume Design,” and the Ovation Award.
 
With music by 20th century Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (courtesy of the Bartók Estate), Jangle is subtitled, Four Hungarian Dances.  In Lar’s own words, “this dance seeks to paint an image of Bartók’s Slavic dance-inspired music....like being drawn into an unplanned street party, spontaneously dancing on the streets of 1936 Budapest.”

Jangle was generously commissioned, in part, by the Joyce Theater’s Stephen and Cathy Weinroth Fund for New Work, by the Rudolph Nureyev® Dance Foundation, and by Ellen C. Monk.

Don’t miss Lar’s newest piece, which takes the stage on November 5th, 7th, and 8th.

THE COMPANY'S CITY CENTER SEASON FEATURES FOUR MASTERWORKS SPANNING 40 YEARS...

North Star, Whirligogs, Concerto Six Twenty-Two, and Men’s Stories.

Concerto Six Twenty-Two fills the stage with 13 company dancers.  Concerto Six Twenty-Two debuted in 1986, with critics and audiences alike receiving the work as ground-breaking and inventive.  Anna Kisselgoff, of The New York Times claimed the dance was bursting “with a vibrantly alive human passion that emanates from the dancers at every moment.  Why beat around the bush?  The truth is that this is what dance is really about.” 

Men’s Stories premiered in 2000 with original music and audio collage by Scott Marshall.  In this 50-minute work, nine male dancers take the stage in tailored black tuxedos with coattails.  Carl Paris, of Attitude calls it “a beautiful, lyric modern dance piece, etched with expressive dance theatre”.  Building upon the intrinsic movement from each dancer, Men’s Stories unfolds to reveal each dancer’s personal saga, by extension providing a larger insight into mankind’s psyche.  With Marshall’s audio collage -- ranging from Beethoven piano concertos, original music, and pop ballads --the work eases the audience into an imaginative world, full of reflection, possibility, and wonder.

Whirligogs and North Star, classic works from 1969 and 1978, will be danced by the 2009 graduating class of The Juilliard School.  You don't want to miss these four Lubovitch classics, representing highlights of Lar's work over the past 40 years.  

Click here to see the performance schedule at City Center.

                                                                  
MEET  SOME  OF  THE  14  DANCERS
BEHIND  LAR'S  GREATEST  WORKS
(SIX SENIOR COMPANY MEMBERS)
dancers
Jonathan E. Alsberry
joined the Lubovitch company in 2007.  He is a graduate of Chicago Academy for the Arts and The Juilliard School under Lawrence Rhodes.  After graduation, he began touring with Baryshnikov's Hell's Kitchen Dance as well as Aszure & Artists.  He has performed with the Met Opera Ballet as a solo dancer, Nilas Martins Dance Company and has appeared on MTV dancing along-side Madonna.  During his professional career, he has worked with many choreographers including Randy Duncan, Stephen Pier and Christopher Wheeldon.
dancers

Jay Franke

joined the Lubovitch company in 2005.  He began his formal training at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, Texas.  In 1993, he was selected as a Finalist for Presidential Scholar in the Arts and accepted into The Juilliard School, where he furthered his studies by working with choreographers such as Harkarvy, Tetley, Perry and York.  Upon receiving his BFA in Dance from The Juilliard School, Franke went to work with the Twyla Tharp Dance Company, "THARP!"  Franke has since danced with The 58 Group, Lyric Opera Ballet Chicago and most recently Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.
dancers
Charlaine Mei Katsuyoshi
joined the Lubovitch company in 2005.  She is originally from Hawaii.  In 1994, she left to attend U.C.-Irvine.  In three years, she graduated cun laude earning her BFA in Dance Performance.  She was a founding member of Donald McKayle's Etude Ensemble and a recipient of both the Arts Bridge and Tierney Scholarships.  She made her film debut in Paramount's movie Blade, and her TV debut in the series "Fame LA."  She then toured worldwide with MOMIX under the direction of Pendleton and Quinn. From 1999-2006, she danced with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, under the direction of Conte and Vincent and toured with the cast of Disney's Broadway Musical The Lion King.
dancers

Scott Rink

joined the Lubovitch company in 1990.  In addition to the Lubovitch company, Rink has performed in the companies of Eliot Feld, Elisa Monte and Karole Armitage.  As a choreographer, Rink's commissioned works include dances for the Oakland Ballet, Repertory Dance Theatre, Ailey II, the Ailey School, Minnesota Dance Theatre and others.  Rink has created a number of works for his company DanceRink that have been performed at notable venues around NYC, as well as other national and international dates.  He is the Resident Choreographer for the NYC-based theater company Transport Group.  Rink has been a guest teacher at Harvard, NCSA, University of Minnesota (Cowles Chair 2003, 2000, 1996), University of Utah, among others.  This fall, his two-act Alice in Wonderland premieres in Baltimore and in the spring, he will be choreographing a new Off-Broadway musical, Becoming Audrey.  More at www.dancerink.com.

dancers
Kevin Scarpin

joined the Lubovitch company in 2000.  He began his dance training at UC/Berkeley while studying rhetoric and comparative ethnic studies and continued his training at NC School of the Arts where he received his BFA.  He also dances with the Sean Curran Company (2000) and Richard Move's MoveOpolis!  He has danced with the Mark Morris Dance Group (L'Allegro il Penseroso ed il Moderato and The Hard Nut), and has performed with Bill Young and Dancers, Keigwin + Company, Doug Varone, Mark Dendy, Alan Good, among many others.  He has also danced in several productions with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and the NYC Opera Ballet.  He has taught and staged dances for both Sean Curran and Lubovitch.

dancers
Katarzyna Skarpetowska
joined the Lubovitch company in 2007.  She is a native of Warsaw, Poland.  She is an alumna of the NYC High School of Performing Arts and received a BFA from The Juilliard School in May 1999, under Artistic Director Benjamin Harkarvy.  In 1992, she performed on Broadway in the musical Metro, directed and choreographed by Janusz Jozefowicz.  She was a member of the Parsons Dance Company from 1999-2006.  Currently she is also working for The Battleworks Dance Company.  She has had the privelage of setting the works of David Parsons and Robert Battle in the US and abroad.  In addition, her own choreography has been performed by various universities, Houston Metropolitan Dance Company, Hubbard Street 2, and the Parsons Dance Company.  In 2007, she was one of two featured dacers during the Glimmerglass Opera Festival and recently completed an Italian tour of Why be Extraordinary if you can be Yourself, a show by Daniel Ezralow.  Skarpetowska is also a freeland teacher holding workshops throughout the world. 
 

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.