Exploration and Skill Define Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s Spring Series

Dance companies of every stripe deserve our admiration simply for celebrating an art form that’s been evolving since the dawn of humankind.   Some are led by visionaries whose legacies are now dance dynasties.  A swarm of others thrive on innovation and partnership to enable dancers to do what they were born to do and to attract audiences to their flame. 

Following the lead of the company’s founder Lou Conte in the late 70s, Hubbard St. Dance Chicago (HSDC) falls comfortably in the second camp and has been reaping the rich benefits of collaboration for decades.  Always a solid force in the city’s dance sphere, HSDC has long been a company that enjoys nudging boundaries in the pursuit of excellence and excitement.  The unveiling of its Spring dance series RE/CONNECT this week accomplished an important goal.  It demonstrates how successfully a company can bring talented dancers and forward thinking choreographers together to showcase the best of contemporary dance.  Under the leadership of HSDC’s new Artistic Director, Linda Denise Fisher-Harrell, audiences are introduced to new facets of a company known for its willingness to grow.  Thursday night’s program reveals how Fisher-Harrell’s input is helping to add interesting new flavors to the company’s repertoire.  The four works on the evening’s line-up shook up expectations and exposed unforeseen possibilities in dance.  Drawing on the creations of both well-established choreographers and those still in the throes of cementing their high repute, the quartet of dances took the audience through a kaleidoscope worlds that played satisfying havoc on the imagination. 

Surprises arrived in form of music nearly as much as they did in dance.  The first piece in the show, Amy Hall Garner’s As the Wind Blows, proved a perfect case in point.  Choreographers often talk about what inspires them to assemble and coordinate movements of the body to convey a thought, idea or sentiment.  That process is nearly always accompanied by music.  Juilliard trained, and with a refreshing gift of dance insight, Garner seems unusually attuned to what music best frames her choreography.  That may be because, for her, music is where it all starts. Then, she declares, “the movement comes in the moment”. As the Wind Blows rolled in on silence before it began to ride the dreamlike musings of Laura Nashman’s solo flute.  Continually growing and building, it would eventually bloom from of a work of tantalizingly curiosity to a frantically wonderful concept piece. Music would lead that journey while dancers gave life to Garner’s vision of how music and movement come together to tell a future centric story.  Calling on the upper body to do its part to tell the narrative, dancers resembled nimble robots performing beautiful acts of dance daring.  Even the women’s hair, pulled back and arranged in three knots near the base of the neck, conveyed an aura of some distant time to come.  Ending on the notes of riotous piano, As the Wind Blows turned out to be a very flattering introduction to a young choreographer while highlighting the unique talent of HSDC dancers.  Both Michelle Dooley and Michael Garcia were superb during their pairs segment and typified the skill seen flashing through each of the evening’s dance performances.

At first glance, B/olero looked as if it would be a radical shift from the first piece’s dynamism.  Just two still dancers about to set off on a dance propelled by the refrains of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero.  But this dance interpretation of Ravel’s masterpiece was reimagined by Ohad Naharin, the Israeli choreographer renowned for his exceptional ability to take dance in new directions. Naharin’s B/olero is a dance of synchrony, mimicry and exciting theater that makes audiences feel as if they’re climbing to the perilous peak of a thrill ride.  Once launched, HSDC’S Alyssa Allen and Jacqueline Burnett delivered a performance full of suspense, athleticism, precision and focus.

A mood break arrived with a work profiling the dance technique of male dancers.  With a career spanning more than 50 years, Chicago native Lar Lubovitch also enjoys a legendary reputation.  Premiering in 2007, his Little Rhapsodies is a classically light dance for three resting on Robert Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes.  Despite the ethereal texture of the music, Lubovitch’s choreographic demands come in the form of intricacy and infallible timing.  Tossed with a few helpings of the choreographer’s trademark spirals, nuance and technique also play into the charm of Little Rhapsodies.  The kind of charm that caused a lot of smiles to linger under all of those masks filling MCA’s Edlis Neeson Theater that frigid March night.  

Darrell Grand Moultrie wanted to do a lot with Dichotomy of a Journey, a work he created with Hubbard Street Dance Company in mind.  Based in New York, Juilliard trained and with a lustrous record of making memorable dance, Moultrie used music as his scaffolding to build his contribution to HSDC’s Spring reveal.  Drawing from his cultural links and his formal training, he fuses classical and Gospel music together in his work with some success.   Arranged in four parts, and often danced beautifully, a stronger unifying link would have given this ambitious work a sturdier sense of cohesion.  Attempting to grow more diverse dance audiences by incorporating the syntax of more voices remains a worthwhile goal.  Taking on this challenge as Mr. Moultrie and the artistic team at HSDC are doing will ultimately deliver the desired dividends.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago

Program A :   March 2 – 6, 2022

Program B:    March 9 – 13, 2022

Museum of Contemporary Art

220 E. Chicago Ave.

Chicago, IL  60611

www.harristheaterchicago.org