Works & Process at the Guggenheim Presents LAR LUBOVITCH AT 80: ART OF THE DUET Review — Twosomes Painting Music In Space

As the screen rolled down in the perfect sight lines theater in the Guggenheim museum basement, the eloquence of Lar Lubovitch was still bathing the room.  He had just been giving a talk about dance, choreography and the essence of a duet as a type of “painting music in space”. Lubovitch explained how he choreographs by linking pictorial thoughts into felt sensations that force dancer and viewer alike to “live in the moment”.  Choreography, he explained, is always moving forward, with one shape dissolving into the next. The driver of the dance is a sense of inevitability.  

Giving his ideas physical form, a short film of two ice dancing duets that Lubovitch had choreographed ensued.  The seemingly effortless smooth glide of  twosomes was exquisite.  The female dancers were more like feathers.  Male and female dancers are glued together, melted apart, and glued together again.  One can imagine that there were many others in the audience who, like this writer, nearly winced at the elegance of the performance.  Later in the evening–when Lubovitch shared that ice dancing is not his true metier–memories of this opening dance’s splendor were dissonant with his remarks. 

Works & Process at Guggenheim Salutes a Choreographer of Global Renown

How fitting that the next work featured an all-male white-clad duo that gracefully challenged the heteronormative concept of duet – Duet from Concerto Six Twenty-Two (1986).  Lubovitch had created this solemn homage to gay men helping each other face death during the AIDS crisis many years ago.  At times holding their arms above as if posed decorative figures on a Grecian urn, the two male dancers and Lubovitch’s choreography lay bare that it is not body type but rather the bond of trust between the dancers that makes the energy of the duet possible. To this writer, this choreography is dignity made visceral.

À La Duet Discussion

Echoing the collaborative nature of duets themselves, Lubovitch was then joined by Wendy Whelan —former ballerina and current Associate Artistic Director of the New York City Ballet— for a semi-planned freewheeling talk about the uniqueness of the duet dance– the magic of a trust-born partnership.  Memorably, when Lubovitch asked her to comment on what she, as a dancer, sought in her duet partners, she gently reminded us that in the ballet world you come to your duet partner “in an arranged marriage”.  At times, Whelan seemed to be our stand-in, doing almost Gidget-like gushes of thanks for Lubovitch’s eloquence on choreography and duets explained and exampled so vividly by his masterful curation of this program.