Not Just Skating By : Dance: Security eludes the Lar Lubovitch company, but after 25 years, its director is still making strides.

Even as his troupe is celebrating its 25th anniversary season, choreographer Lar Lubovitch finds that a dance company’s security remains an elusive thing.

“In this business, the wolf is always at the door,” said Lubovitch, reached by phone in Montreal, where he is choreographing an ice-skating version of Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” for Canadian television. “For 25 years, we’re always on the verge of folding.”

Orange County fans of the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company needn’t fret. The troupe will dance as scheduled tonight and Sunday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. The anniversary season began in Virginia in October, swings through Europe in May and ends in South America in September.

While finances may always be a concern, Lubovitch strives to keep artistic standards high.

“One just makes a commitment to integrity. I’ve maintained my obsession with creating dance, and I continue to stretch myself,” he said.

The eclectic program in Irvine features “Four Ragtime Dances,” with music by Charles Ives; “Fandango,” to Ravel’s “Bolero”; “Marimba,” choreographed in the 1970s to music by Steve Reich, and “Waiting for the Sunrise,” to five songs by Les Paul and Mary Ford and three by Johnny Puleo and his Harmonica Gang.

And on Feb. 19 at UCLA, the agenda includes “Concerto Six Twenty-Two,” set to Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto and featuring a controversial central duet for two men. Many have found in the duet a metaphor for the AIDS epidemic; Lubovitch has maintained that the pas de deux is simply a reflection on friendship and dignity, though he recognizes that both are powerful AIDS crisis themes.

Lubovitch’s choreography has been described in these pages as “vivacious . . . full-throttled,” elsewhere as “vibrant,” and his troupe “high-octane.”

In conversation the man himself seemed precisely the opposite: decidedly quiet, even terse. The fact that his only opportunity to talk was at 10 p.m., at the end of a 12-hour work day, was apparently of little consequence.

“In general he’s pretty shy, relatively reticent, a very private person,” concurred Dick Caples, the company’s executive director.

However unassuming, the Manhattan-based Lubovitch has choreographed more than 50 works for his company; many of those pieces also show up in the repertories of companies such as the New York City Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet and Royal Danish Ballet. “Waiting for the Sunrise” (1992) was commissioned in part by Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project.

Lubovitch was born in Chicago in 1943. He didn’t pursue dance seriously until seeing Jose Limon’s modern-dance troupe his freshman year at the University of Iowa.

The next summer he took dance classes with Limon and Alvin Ailey and soon attended the Juilliard School, where his teachers included Antony Tudor. He danced with numerous modern, ballet, jazz and ethnic companies--supplementing his income with such jobs as waiter, carpenter and go-go dancer--before forming his own troupe.

He expanded his horizons, and those of ice skating, by choreographing dances for such Olympic gold medalists as Peggy Fleming and Dorothy Hamill.

On Broadway, Lubovitch received a Tony nomination for his staging of “Into the Woods” and choreographed Salome’s “Dance of the Seven Veils” in the production with Al Pacino and Sheryl Lee. Most recently he created the dances for “The Red Shoes.”

“His choreography (for ‘The Red Shoes’) was universally acclaimed,” Caples said. “Unfortunately, the show was otherwise a flop, a big flop.” But the year may yield a silver lining: Lubovitch has agreed to set “The Red Shoes” ballet for American Ballet Theatre.

According to Lubovitch, his methods remain relatively constant whether the inspiration is Mozart or the Harmonica Gang.

“Improvisation, movement, discovery. . . . When I’m working I’m trying to discover the movement that is meant to be. I don’t mean that in any magical or extrasensory way; I just mean to discover the movement that seems inevitable.

“If I get it right, there are no wasted steps. And every piece is a step in that direction.”

* The Lar Lubovitch Dance Company performs “Four Ragtime Dance,” “Fandango,” “Marimba” and “Waiting for the Sunrise” tonight at 8 p.m. at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. Also Sunday at 3 p.m. $25. (714) 854-4646 or (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster).