Dallas’ Bruce Wood Dance gets jazzy with choreographer Lar Lubovitch’s ‘Elemental Brubeck’

By Editor On Nov 12, 2021

Lar Lubovitch is one of the last remaining choreographers of a generation trained by modern dance pioneers like Martha Graham and José Limón. The 78-year-old Chicago native wanted to be a painter until an encounter in gymnastics class with a professor who needed men to lift her dance students led him to his true calling.

“I was lucky, quite by accident,” said Lubovitch in an interview at Bruce Wood Dance’s Dallas Design District Studios, where he trained the company in rehearsing his Elemental Brubeck for the upcoming autumn concerts. “I ran towards it immediately.”

Decades later, Wood became a member of Lubovitch’s New York-based group. Two weeks before an important season began at the City Center, the Fort Worth native was called in as an emergency replacement when Doug Varone, whose company happened to be in Dallas last month, was injured and had to drop out.

“He was a pretty big doer, much like Doug – broad and deeply rooted,” recalls Lubovitch. “He learned this massive dance in almost a day because he learned quickly. He saved this dance and did it wonderfully. From then on he was in the company. “

78-year-old choreographer Lar Lubovitch (right) blows while coaching Bruce Wood Dance Company member Cole Vernon and rehearsing the “Red Man” solo that opens Lubovitch’s “Elemental Brubeck”.(Sharen Bradford)

Wood, who died in 2014, often cited Lubovitch as an influence on his work. Both came from a specifically American tradition of musicality and external emotionality, which began with the ballet innovations of the Russian immigrant George Balanchine and continued with modern second and third generation choreographers such as Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp. The latter also had an impact on Wood, who danced in her company before joining Lubovitch.

“He never ‘tagged’ in the studio,” says Lubovitch of Wood, referring to the practice of dancing under physically in order to study a piece mentally. “It’s actually a skill. But some dancers never beat it. They always go full steam ahead and Bruce was one of those people who really made it up. He had a lot of passion. “

They became friends. “Bruce was a lot of fun personally,” says Lubovitch. “He was great fun outside of work, a very entertaining person to hang out with. We did that quite often on tour. He was one of the people I hung out with. “

The late Fort Worth choreographer Bruce Wood.(Brian Guilliaux)

Devastated by the AIDS crisis, Wood returned to North Texas in the late 1980s and soon started his own business. The work A Brahms Symphony, which he learned so quickly, was a breakthrough for Lubovitch in 1985. Wood also played an important role in the 1986 sequel to Mozart’s Concerto Six Twenty-Two.

After a period of introspective experimentation, Lubovitch had reverted to his original style of doing dances on his own body rather than trying to get it out of his company members.

“Just tell the truth and say who you are,” he explains. “I made a conscious decision that all of my work revolves around dance itself, which is a profound and meaningful subject. It was a big, passionate dance about dancing with big, curved, virtuoso movements. It was an important statement: ‘Pass or fail, that’s me.’ “

Although Lubovitch took his first three dance classes with Graham, Limón and Alvin Ailey at the American Dance Festival in a matter of hours, Lubovitch said he was emulating British ballet choreographer Antony Tudor. Together with Graham and Limón, Tudor was a teacher at Juilliard, where Lubovitch moved after his first year at the University of Iowa.

Bruce Wood Dance rehearses the exuberant third part of Lar Lubovitch’s “Elemental Brubeck”.(Sharen Bradford)

“He was the first choreographer to bring psychological characters into ballet rather than birds and fantasy people,” says Lubovitch. “But it was his relationship with music that influenced me the most, his way of visualizing music instead of imitating its rhythm and structure, actually acting like the music he was very good at.”

This approach merged with Lubovitch’s background as a painter and as a growing lover of Chicago’s monumental architecture. He sees music as forms that are changing, he says. “I realize that I was painting in space all the time and that the dancers were the color that filled the entire canvas.”

He’s also a populist – “I’m not trying to be misunderstood” – which has resulted in concerts choreographing Broadway musicals like Into the Woods and Ice Dance. Performers have reported that his choreography feels good on their bodies.

“It’s more like I would never turn down a job. I went where I was asked, ”says Lubovitch of his diverse career. “John Curry, who was an Olympic gold medalist, saw my work and thought it looked like skating. I was a very good dancer so I know what feels right next. When I take a certain step or a certain gesture, I look for the next inevitable event. “

Lar Lubovitch(Rose oak tree)

With Elemental Brubeck, part of Bruce Wood Dance’s program from November 19-21 at the Moody Performance Hall, Lubovitch was commissioned by the San Francisco Ballet to create a jazz piece that will be premiered at a festival in Paris. In his search for music he found Dave Brubeck’s only orchestral work, the 16-minute “Elementals”.

To round out the score, he landed on two shorter, related numbers, “Iberia” and “Theme from Elementals” to precede it. He describes Elemental Brubeck as “an upside-down pyramid” that begins with a solo for a dancer in a red body, then turns into a duet, followed by a choreography for nine. “I can’t tell you why I saw a red man dance,” he says, “but I saw that from the start.”

Bruce Wood Dance Company member Cole Vernon rehearsing Lar Lubovitch’s “Elemental Brubeck”.(Sharen Bradford)

On one recent run, Cole Vernon, a member of the Wood Company, stepped high, straightening his limbs in tight curves, and making bouncing turns not unlike a song-and-dance man. Later, the rest of the company articulated Lubovitch’s sunny exuberance, complete with sensual hip rotations and jazz hands. Lubovitch drew on both social dance idioms from the 1950s and film musicals from the jazz period.

“This piece in particular is an anthropological excavation. I have collected as many American popular dance moves as I knew from my own days as a teenager. I would really call it Mid-Century Modern, ”he says. “Brubeck is so typically American. His is a moment in jazz that is representative of a certain time – the ultimate innocence. “