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[0:01] Ben Rimalower: Broadway Podcast Network presents Giants in the Sky, How Sondheim and Lapine Went Into the Woods, with me, Ben Rimalower. Today's guest, Lar Lubovitch, the Original Choreographer.

[0:13] Lar Lubovitch: Once upon a time. I choreographed the original Broadway production of Into the Woods, for which I was nominated for a 1988 Tony Award. I also choreographed the Tony-winning revival of The King and I, starring Donna Murphy, and received the Astaire Award for choreographing Broadway's The Red Shoes. My dances on film include the Emmy-nominated Othello, Fandango, and Robert Altman's The Company. Based in New York City and founded in 1968, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company has performed throughout the world, and my dances have also been performed by many other major companies, including American Ballet Theater, the Joffrey Ballet, New York City Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and many others. I am a distinguished professor of dance at UC Irvine, and in 2014 I was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Juilliard School.

[1:17] Ben Rimalower: But we've gone on to do several other things musical theater-related since Into the Woods. Of course, Into the Woods is such a, especially as time goes on, such a sort of, you know, iconic musical for generations. But prior to that, what was your musical theater affinity or experience? Had you done stuff in school? Where did you intersect?

[1:41] Lar Lubovitch: Zero. I had no relationship to musical theater whatsoever. I was concerned entirely with concert dance. Yeah. What year was it? 87. By 87, I had my own company for 20 years, my own dance company.

[2:02] Ben Rimalower: And some of the stuff even that you do, though, in that vein, outside of musical theater, has some overlap, like the Gershwin stuff, and I mean, I suppose it's splitting hairs, and I've read interviews you've given where you talked about the storytelling aspect of dance being so important to you, which, of course, would make you a decent, you know, candidate to cross over. But how did it come into your, how did you first hear that Into the Woods was a thing?

[2:34] Lar Lubovitch: Well, I actually didn't hear about it. I was contacted, actually, first by Heidi Landesman, representing James. And I know that James had some background with dance. He was interested in concert dance. I think he had done some work with Twyla Tharp. I don't know precisely what vein, maybe he had done some images for him, because he had done some graphic design. But he was aware of concert dance, and apparently they were going to see dance and scouting around. So I had, I believe I'd recently done New York City Center, and James and Heidi must have seen it. And so I got the call to come and discuss a project with them, but I really had no idea what it was about at that time.

[3:20] Ben Rimalower: And I heard that some choreographers were given, like, kind of, like an audition workshop to get this job. Was that something that you were part of?

[3:34] Lar Lubovitch: No, no, no, no audition was suggested.

[3:36] Ben Rimalower: You didn't choreograph things on the actors before you had the job?

[3:42] Lar Lubovitch: No. Oh, good. I remember the discussion, and I had got some free information, whether it was, I think it was from Heidi about the subject. Yeah. And the discussion was about how I visualized these people movement. And I remember speaking about trying to capture a storybook movement, like the way people seem to be moving in illustrated storybooks.

[4:10] Ben Rimalower: And wanting to find a way that conveyed that kind of graphic idea.

[4:23] Lar Lubovitch: Well, all of those fairy tale books are highly illustrated. I'm going to fail to bring up the correct name, but there's one series of most of those fairy tales illustrated by a prominent French children's book illustrator. And those illustrations are full of movement, and suggest a lot of behavioral things. Like you can see the kind of dainty way the wealthier sets are posing and shaping themselves, as opposed to the peasant stories with rounder backs, more humble kind of shapes and feelings that they're conveying.

[5:05] Ben Rimalower: That is fascinating. I'm already so gratified by this conversation. And I can visualize the books, and I can see it in the movement in that production, and in the costumes too, actually. It feels integrated.

[5:19] Lar Lubovitch: Yes, we were all consulting those same books as a source on the James Bond.

[5:28] Ben Rimalower: And was that something that you were able to impart outside the realm of the musical numbers? That because it feels so integrated into the entire staging of the show, or was it a more traditional sort of Broadway, like you come in for the songs, the song ends, and then you're out?

[5:51] Lar Lubovitch: I did the musical staging, and my title is musical stager. And of course, you know, people in musical theater know what that means, as opposed to choreographer. It is a different skill set, is a different obligation. And I don't know if that's part of this conversation, but for the most part, it's what people do while they're singing is the musical staging. But I had very little to do with any of the staging during dialogue. James is particularly interested in my involvement if there were more than two people singing. When there's one person singing, it's more of a dramatic, it's more of a monologue. It can be handled by a director. But in my experience with James, and subsequently with other directors I worked with, they are not comfortable when the numbers get beyond two.

[6:42] Ben Rimalower: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[6:45] Lar Lubovitch: And some sections that broke out right into dancing where there's some choreography, but I was sort of warned, not warned, but advised in advance that Stephen Sondheim is skeptical of dance in his musicals, not simple dance in general, but in his musicals.

[7:04] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[7:05] Lar Lubovitch: You must know that there's not a lot of choreography or a lot of dance in his musicals. He's of the school, at least everything has moved the story forward. And we all know how frequently dance had not done that and still frequently does not do it.

[7:19] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[7:21] Lar Lubovitch: And, you know, there are always rare examples of Jerry Robbins musicals where dance story, but for the most part, sometimes uncomfortable with anything that doesn't move the story forward.

[7:33] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[7:33] Lar Lubovitch: And had you seen those Sondheim shows? Were you familiar with that going into the project, or was that just something that was communicated to you?

[7:44] Lar Lubovitch: No, I was very aware of them. I'd seen Company and I'd seen-

[7:47] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[7:48] Lar Lubovitch: Absolutely very great and very moving and real, real statement, not just fluff.

[7:56] Ben Rimalower: Yeah. And what was there when you were given the material of, such as it existed, I guess, early in 1987, when you would have started working, was there, were there places in the score, I guess, in songs where there might've been a possibility of more kind of dance that you might've wanted to do? Had that not been James and Stephen's desire?

[8:27] Lar Lubovitch: Well, I would say there were possibilities for a movement that I wouldn't call dance, but more staging within some of the songs. And I did stage some of the solos as well, but Stephen, coming back to really where the, the buck stops, really doesn't like people to move while they're singing his songs.

[8:45] Ben Rimalower: Yeah. Yeah.

[8:47] Lar Lubovitch: He's willing to give into the so-called button that Broadway, you know, language is so familiar with. It's got to end somehow, but other than the button, he really wants people to stand still with their arms to their sides and sing. And, you know, you know what his songs are like, they're extremely intricate.

[9:05] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[9:06] Lar Lubovitch: And you don't want distractions.

[9:09] Ben Rimalower: Yeah. It's funny that they wouldn't think, I would think that especially the kind of sort of storytelling movement that you do would help illuminate the intricate lyrics rather than distracting from them. But maybe, maybe it's a matter of degree.

[9:28] Lar Lubovitch: What, was there a challenge because it wasn't a cast of by any means dancers? I mean, they weren't, a lot of them were not even really, some of them were more actors rather than sort of musical theater, you know, people. Was it challenging to get them moving, especially in the group numbers?

[9:51] Lar Lubovitch: They were definitely not movers, not dancers, but experienced seasoned theater, musical theater actors often called upon to move. So there's, there's some sense of the ability to follow movement instruction.

[10:04] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[10:07] Lar Lubovitch: I had to tell them to move with movement within their ability. I put them to expect something beyond the capabilities. It would look at, and it would embarrass them besides. So, so my job very differently than I work with dancers with a capacity for movement is to find the language that is comfortable on their bodies, but expressive enough to convey the movement ideas.

[10:32] Ben Rimalower: Yeah. And I also, I heard that at some point in the maybe in the workshop process, I guess that was in the summer before the Broadway rehearsals actually started that there had been sequences that you choreographed on dancers, maybe from your company or other, other people to show to Sondheim and Lapine what the number might look like fully realized. Is that true?

[11:02] Lar Lubovitch: It's absolutely true. Yes. I utilize my company to stage the larger group actions. There is a real dance at the beginning, something that one might call a dance. And yeah, I staged that because I was an unknown. James did hire me to do the show. I didn't have to audition, but I'm not sure if it was decided that I should do things in advance, but I think that I chose to, and James is not definitive about his taste and his choice. He needs to see a lot of things before he can decide my experience where he can decide what really, um, is what he's looking for. He's, he's not that sure, but I totally understand that. And until you find it, you throw away a lot of stuff. You're going to get more often than right.

[12:06] Lar Lubovitch: Did you ever think later on to repeat that kind of a process just because it is, rather than dealing with the more time-consuming of putting the movement on actors and then finding out that the director isn't happy? Did you ever think of doing that again so that, because I'm sure your own company can pick it up from you much faster? Yes, it was definitely, definitely faster to work that way. But then of course, once it was transferred to the actors, then you find out what they really can and can't comfortably do. So everything had to be pared down a bit and custom fit.

[12:44] Lar Lubovitch: Yeah, I mean, and some of them probably, you know, certainly Bernadette Peters is somebody that, you know, is, you know, something of a triple threat. Was there any place to kind of take advantage of that? I mean, I can think of some of her kind of witch movements as having kind of more of like a grandeur and taking up the stage. We worked on her physical life, she and I together. And James kind of sent us in another room to work together to find out physically how she could embody this crippled witch transformation. And we did some pretty crazy things, like actually brought in slender ropes and tied her arms and legs up, like tied one of her arms to her leg and then tied the other arm in a way across her chest.

So any movement she had to do would be restricted by the constraints. And whether it produced the character she eventually put on stage specifically, I'm not sure, but it was in the mix. Yeah, something we explored. And Bernadette is very open and very willing and extremely generous artist, one of the most generous artists I've ever worked with. So anything that I wanted to try experimentally, she's always game for it, happy to try it, investing in it. Fascinating. Things like that. So she finds her physical life as the crippled witch. That, well, it certainly paid off. I mean, it is such a wonderful physical transformation.

[14:16] Lar Lubovitch: I guess along the same lines, I'm curious about with Robert Westenberg as the wolf. Was there that kind of approach as well? He can kind of dance, actually. Oh, yeah. Because he does a bit of a dance in his production number, a bit of a soft shoe. And the staging for that number is probably dancier than almost any other number in the show. And the music calls for it. The music is written like a vaudeville soft shoe. So nobody objected to that. It seemed appropriate.

[14:47] Lar Lubovitch: Yeah, it really is. It seamlessly just happens. I mean, it almost, it's funny, it is the most dance-like, you know, I guess, performative thing in maybe the whole show. And yet it doesn't at all stick out. It feels like what the wolf would do in that writing. I think that's true. Even though it has that kind of a traditional vaudeville kind of bent to it, it doesn't stand out as separate from the overall sense of it.

[15:08] Ben Rimalower: Oh, that's so interesting. Was it, oh, by the way, from that workshop, I don't know how involved you were at that point in like July, August of '87.

[15:29] Lar Lubovitch: I wasn't involved in any workshop.

[15:31] Ben Rimalower: Oh, no.

[15:35] Lar Lubovitch: Until I came on stage in the show. Oh, okay. They had done a production in California. Yeah. I knew nothing. And in fact, I was advised not to look at the videos of it because I just wanted to think differently. Having found what he found, I didn't want to inflect back to where they were. So I actually don't know what that was like. But by the time I was on, it wasn't a workshop anymore. We were actually staging the show.

[16:05] Ben Rimalower: So you never did it with Betty Buckley or Burke Moses or any of those people?

[16:10] Lar Lubovitch: I did work with Betty Buckley. Do you remember anything about her, which I'm so fascinated by what that might have been as an other incarnation? Betty is incredibly powerful presence and not to be ignored, not to be taken lightly. And when Betty opens her mouth to act or sing, it kind of pins everyone to the wall. She's just a uniquely powerful presence, singing in particular. It's difficult to do anything but stand still when she's singing. I mean, for others, because she's so riveting. And so she's a very, very powerful character. And those songs were unbelievable under her voice. I almost wondered if it was too much voice for Sondheim. Because he likes people to sing in a kind of a speak natural voice. He doesn't use operatic style voices or big belting voices. He likes a natural sound to their acting voice to a certain extent. And you know, there are a whole slew of marvelous Broadway actor singers who can do that in that way.

[17:19] Ben Rimalower: Interesting. And what about with any of the other characters or the specific actors? Were there anything else like where like the soft shoe or Bernadette's witch persona where there was a specific thing that that, you know, we see your contribution?

[17:38] Lar Lubovitch: I don't think anything as ornate as the experiments with Bernadette, but just in the process of staging the numbers, people discovering their characters and their physical life, how they handle their props, their posture, things like that. It all comes up in process, but not so specifically by intent.

[18:04] Ben Rimalower: And if you don't mind me asking you kind of just like pragmatic technical questions, like, I mean, nowadays on a Broadway musical, there would be an associate choreographer and assistant choreographer and dance captains. And, you know, I didn't see those kind of credits for Into the Woods. Who maintained like when replacement cast, did you go back and work with other people?

[18:20] Lar Lubovitch: I went back usually. Yes. And it was called for to see the show once or twice a week. Wow. All rehearsals if necessary, whether it's for replacements or understudies or something had slipped.

[18:40] Ben Rimalower: And how about for the tour? I mean, I think of Cleo Lane as such a unique jazz presence. Did that bring new things to the movement?

[18:46] Lar Lubovitch: Well, Cleo Lane is considerably older than Bernadette and actually physically not as capable of doing the original staging. I actually had to restage a number of things for her that were within her comfort zone. And she was pretty well aware of her physical capacity and really wouldn't do what did not feel right on her.

[19:10] Ben Rimalower: Why? I did see one grainy, scratchy video of her and it seems like you guys did a good job externally selling it, glossing over whatever there was. No disrespect intended, but covering her.

[19:27] Lar Lubovitch: Yes. Because she brought other things to it. Wisdom, depth.

[19:44] Ben Rimalower: I'm curious, did you do anything special for when the filming was happening for the American Playhouse broadcast? Did anything have to be adapted to play better on the cameras or in the different lighting or anything?

[19:50] Lar Lubovitch: I'm not sure what you're referring to. We did a archival recording from the Library of Performing Arts, which is there. I'm not exactly aware of what you're describing. You know, it was filmed for PBS and home video. The PBS video was the, I thought it was library archival video, which is done with high quality camera work and editing stuff. But perhaps there was another entity involved I wasn't aware of.

[20:25] Ben Rimalower: But you didn't have to do any special adjustments for that?

[20:30] Lar Lubovitch: No. Well, it plays beautifully. I mean, it really, it's been such like, I think, a gateway to certainly to Sondheim's other stuff, but to musical theater in general, I think, for generations of theater students and fans and artists and everything since then.

[20:47] Lar Lubovitch: Well, there's such an essential simplicity to it that it's so approachable at so many different levels for so many groups of people who want to do it. James might have written a very masterful book about Sondheim in the Park with George, but in fact, it's Into the Woods that has legs. Yeah, it's never been out of circulation somewhere. I went to London to see the Dunmer Warehouse production of Into the Woods.

[21:10] Ben Rimalower: Oh, yeah, that's Bob Crowley, John Crowley?

[21:15] Lar Lubovitch: Yeah, something like that. And of course, very, very different than Dunmer Warehouse. Things are done much more economically.

[21:24] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[21:24] Lar Lubovitch: Intimately, it was quite a wonderful production.

[21:30] Ben Rimalower: Yeah. There was also that cool Fiasco Theater Company production. Did you catch that one at the Laura Pels?

[21:35] Lar Lubovitch: No. It was, you know, with a small cast doubling in all the roles and then using sort of found ad hoc props and costume pieces like horizontal blinds to be the stepsisters' dresses.

[21:51] Lar Lubovitch: That's the thing. It can be done that way and can be perfectly cogent and perfectly understandable. It's just written in such a way that it can't be damaged, so to speak.

[22:00] Ben Rimalower: Yeah. I do wonder, like, if it ever could be reinterpreted more as a dance piece, you know, if there could be, in the way that it could breathe and become these different kind of takes on it, if there could be a much, you know, maybe even less literal, just sort of more fluid version of it. Do you think it has the possibility of that?

[22:30] Lar Lubovitch: Possibility of that? I don't think that is a consideration I would make. It's not a piece of material that would want to be transmuted to another form. It is what it is.

[22:44] Ben Rimalower: Are there any other Sondheim musicals that you ever had your eye on to maybe do that with or even just to choreograph?

[22:52] Lar Lubovitch: No, that was the one I was invited to be a part of, much to my privilege. And I've followed his work, of course, since then, but none that I would have thought to participate in.

[23:08] Ben Rimalower: Well, we're certainly glad that you participated in this one. I mean, it really, I mean, many musicals have cast recordings that, you know, are celebrated and preserve their legacy, but that PBS broadcast of Into the Woods has made it live on and live on in that production in your musical staging. And it's such a treasure, I think, for so many people, and it's been a calling card for the show. And thank you for sharing your process of it.

[23:38] Lar Lubovitch: My pleasure.

[23:44] Ben Rimalower: Thank you for listening to Giants in the Sky, How Sondheim and Lapine Went Into the Woods on the Broadway Podcast Network. Look out for episode 19 with Ellen Foley, the witch in both the Old Globe production and the closing Broadway cast.