BELLA LEWITZKY RECEIVES CAPEZIO AWARD.

NEW YORK CITY--Bella Lewitzky will be awarded the 1999 Capezio/Ballet Makers Dance Foundation Annual Dance Award in a ceremony on May 10 in New York City. "I feel I've earned it," the eighty-three-year-old Lewitzky laughs. "As my husband says, it's better late than never." A dancer, choreographer, teacher, and advocate of dance, Lewitzky retired in 1997, after thirty-one seasons as the artistic director of the Lewitzky Dance Company and sixty-three years as a concert dancer.

Born in Los Angeles to Russian immigrant parents and raised in a utopian socialist colony in the Mojave desert, Lewitzky began studying modern dance in Los Angeles with Lester Horton, later becoming his leading dancer and collaborator and a master teacher of his technique. In 1948 she cofounded the Dance Theater of Los Angeles with Horton; Carmen de Lavallade and Alvin Ailey are among the dancers who studied there.

In 1951 Lewitzky opened her own school and company, Dance Associates, where she focused on her own technique and choreography. In 1955, after the birth of her daughter, Nora, she taught at Idyllwild School of Music and Arts and in 1958 became chair of the dance department. She was later the founding dean of the school of dance at California Institute of the Arts.

In 1966, at age 50, Lewitzky formed the Lewitzky Dance Company, in which she continued to perform as well as choreograph and direct. She is known for her great inventiveness, meticulous craftsmanship, and formidable control and placement. Lewitzky is the recipient of numerous awards, including six honorary doctorates, the 1978 Dance Magazine Award, and the National Medal of Arts. She currently lives in New Mexico and tours and lectures on dance.

She is also known for her political activism in protesting against Senator Joseph McCarthy and others of the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the 1950s. In 1991 she successfully sued the National Endowment of the Arts for their "anti-obscenity" clause violating grantees' First Amendment rights.

When asked if there's any one particular aspect of her career that stands out, Lewitzky says no. "I love all the things that I have done; I am fairly good at what I do, and it's a very satisfying profession. I feel very blessed to have been able to have it."