Lar
Lubovitch

Benois de la Danse laureate

Born in Chicago, Lubovitch was educated at the University of Iowa and The Juilliard School in New York. His teachers at Juilliard included Antony Tudor, Jose Limon, Anna Sokolow and Martha Graham. He danced in numerous modern, ballet, jazz and ethnic companies before forming the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in 1968. Over the past 44 years the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company has gained an international reputation as one of America's top dance companies. Lubovitch has created more than 100 dances for the company (based in New York City) which has performed throughout the United States and in more than 40 foreign countries.

Works that he originally created on the Lubovitch company are in the repertories of many other select companies throughout the world, including New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project and Netherlands Dance Theater. His Othello — A Dance in Three Acts and was nominated for an Emmy Award. His dance My Funny Valentine was featured in the Robert Altman film The Company.

Lubovitch made his Broadway debut in 1987 with the musical staging for the Stephen Sondheim/ 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. For his work on that show, he received the 1993-94 Astaire Award from the Theater Development Fund. In 1996 he created the musical staging (and two new dances) for the Tony-Award-winning Broadway revival of The King and I. In 1999 he devised the musical staging for Walt Disney's stage version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in Berlin. In 2004 he was honored with the Elan Award for his outstanding choreography for the theater.

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 2007, he founded the Chicago Dancing Festival. This event reaches over 15,000 audience members annually and is completely free to the public. In 2011, Lubovitch was named a Ford Fellow by United States Artists, and he was awarded the Dance/USA Honors (the highest honor bestowed by American dance) in recognition of his contribution to dance.

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