Word: lubovitch
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Dates: during 1977-1977
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...Lubovitch works with a similar sort of gesture in Stravinsky's "Les Noces"--highly specific, mimetic gesture, yet abstract, interesting as pure form. Ignoring the abbreviated libretto Stravinsky wrote with Bronislava Nijinska for the 1923 Diaghilev premiere, the choreographer presents instead his own vision of a Russian peasant rite, an innocent bride and shy groom, their anxious yet wise parents, and high-spirited friends. In a recent interview Lubovitch explained...
...UNTIL curtain call on the second night, when choreographer Lar Lubovitch jumped forward to acknowledge the applause of his own company, did I realize who he was: that one dancer who'd kept so much to himself in the background. Lubovitch isn't a star. Unlike Martha Graham, for instance, his presence as a performer doesn't constitute the driving force of his work. Yet his presence as maker of the dance is much in evidence onstage. Not that he puts choreographic structure itself on show; his forms are too well-crafted to be immediately visible. Rather...
...they dance beautifully. The company members study ballet as well as modern; their fluid ease in moving can only be termed classical. Lubovitch too can be thought of as a classical choreographer in that he subordinates personal statement to an expression of the beauty and power of the corps. He doesn't advocate any one point of view as to the use of music, choreographic form, or movement style. Instead, he takes what he needs where he finds it: in the traditions of ballet, in the techniques of Graham or Humphrey, in the post-modern aesthetics developed by his contemporaries...
This type of company probably couldn't have existed twenty years ago. The dance world then was too polarized between the spheres of ballet and modern, and modern choreographers themselves were divided; dances were ideological statements. Today Lubovitch takes for granted the freedom to work in any style; his dancers are able to attack any movement with the lightness of ballet or the strength of Graham or the breathiness of Humphrey. Lubovitch can allow each dance to create its own technique and aesthetic...
...Whirligogs," an early work, exhibits the same concerns. Lubovitch, exploring the ways shape and emotional suggestion interrelate, relies on representational gesture just verging on the abstract. Accompanied by Berio's voice collage "Sinfonia," black-hooded dancers appear, then a man and woman in bared dress. The hooded dancers return unmasked, later reappearing disguised, only to toss their masks defiantly to the side, and then again appear as dark spirits surrounding and overwhelming the lovers. Lubovitch uses his costume flexibly, allowing the masks to suggest rather than to define possibilities. He realizes the unanticipated. As a voice in flat monotone recites...