The Man Behind the Vision

         Lar Lubovitch was born in Chicago, IL in 1943.  As a freshman studying art at the University of Iowa Lubovitch attended a performance by the Jose Limon Dance Company and it was then he knew what he wanted to do.  "I came to dancing very late," Lubovitch says in Gruen's 1988 book, PEOPLE WHO DANCE.  "But I had a ferocious determination to achieve certain abilities that the dancers around me already possessed." Lubovitch went on to attend the Julliard School in New York City on full scholarship.  His teachers there included Anthony Tudor, Jose Limon, Anna Sokolow, Martha Grahm, and Louis Horst.   From Julliard Lubovitch went on to study at the Martha Grahm School and the Joffrey Ballet School.  After dancing with numerous dance companies he started the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in 1968.  Since 1968 Lar has made his mark on the choreographic world choreographing.  In 1987 he made his broadway debut with "Into the  Woods," in which he received a Tony Award nomination.  He also choreographed for the broadway show "The Red Shoes." 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. Most recently 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.  Lubovitch has also gained much recognition for his rendition of "Othello," which aired on a PBS special.  

In addition to his work for stage, screen and television, Lubovitch has also made a significant contribution to the advancement of choreography in the field of ice-dancing. He has created 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. For French Olympic skating champions Isabelle and Paul Duchesnay, Lubovitch choreographed a television project based on The Planets by Gustav Holst; telecast by the A&E network in 1995, the program was nominated for an International Emmy Award, a CableACE Award and a Grammy Award.

In 2007, to supplement the activities (creating, performing and teaching) of the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, he founded the Chicago Dancing Company, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to present a wide variety of excellent dance and build dance audiences in his native Chicago. Initiated by Chicago-born Lubovitch (and our Chicago-based dancer Jay Franke), the Chicago Dancing Festival (CDF) was launched in cooperation with Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) and the City of Chicago. The official premiere of the festival was a free one-night-only dance concert at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. More than 8,000 people attended the performance, which featured dancers from seven leading American companies. For 2008, CDF will be expanded to include three days of programming. For his visionary risk-taking in establishing the Festival, Lubovitch was named a "2007 Chicagoan of the Year" by the Chicago Tribune.