Lucas Hoving; Dancer, Choreographer, Teacher

Veteran modern dance performer, choreographer and teacher Lucas Hoving died Wednesday at his home in San Francisco. He was 87 and reportedly had been suffering from heart problems and emphysema in recent years.

In the dance world, Hoving will forever be identified with the role of Iago that he originated in “The Moor’s Pavane,” Jose Limon’s now-classic four-character distillation of Shakespeare’s “Othello” in 1949. He outlived Limon by more than a quarter-century and thus became a vital link to the choreographer’s style, repertory and creative vision.

Small and blond, Hoving represented a compelling contrast to the tall, dark Limon, and this physical difference became formalized in works that cast them as antagonists: most notably “The Emperor Jones” (in which Hoving played “the White Man”), “La Malinche” (in which Hoving played “the Conquistador”) and, of course, “The Moor’s Pavane.”

He also became a respected choreographer in his own right, creating a number of works, including “Icarus” (1964), which has been revived by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and other companies. Perhaps his greatest influence, however, has been as a teacher at such major institutions as the Juilliard School in New York, the Essen Folkwang School in Germany and the Swedish State Dance School.

He was born Lukas Hovinga in Groningen, the Netherlands, trained with Yvonne Georgi and danced briefly with the Dutch Opera Ballet before joining the groundbreaking Kurt Jooss contemporary ballet company in England. Dancing with Jooss on tour in America in 1939, he first saw American modern dance and subsequently returned to New York to study with Martha Graham and to perform in Broadway musicals, including “Bloomer Girl” (1944), choreographed by Agnes de Mille.

He also danced for Graham and Valerie Bettis before inaugurating a 14-year relationship with the Limon company in 1949. He formed his own touring group, Dance Trio, in 1966, the year that the original cast of “The Moor’s Pavane” gave a special performance of the work at the White House for President Lyndon Johnson.

Hoving was appointed director of the Rotterdam Dance Academy in 1971 and thereafter divided his teaching activities between Europe and the United States.

“He was a wonderful teacher--technique and choreography. Students absolutely adored him,” said Betty Jones, another member of the original cast of “The Moor’s Pavane,” in an interview with the Associated Press from her home in Honolulu. “He had an eye for movement. He could come in and see faults that Jose could not see.”