Hubbard Street Dance Chicago

Posted on Wednesday, October 6

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Opens 2010-2011 Season with Celestial Dance Works
By Debby Storms

In four exquisite works for its recently completed fall series (Sept. 30 to Oct. 3 at the Harris Theater at Millennium Park), Hubbard Street Dance Chicago once again proves its place as one of the world’s premier contemporary dance companies.

The series combined brilliant, challenging choreography executed by a core company of 16 extraordinarily gifted and versatile dancers. Solos or duets were never credited, perhaps speaking to the fact that each dancer is equally talented and of star caliber.

On Friday night, HSDC took the audience on a journey from the bowels of the earth to the raw urban streets and, finally, to heaven. The dancers stretched our understanding of art, life and culture while stretching their own bodies and dance aesthetic.

The first two pieces were new works by Dancer and Resident Choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo.

In Blanco, four women in pale, blue-grey leotards delicately combine in a series of abstract, sculptural movements to piano music by Felix Mendelssohn and Charles Valentin Alkan. The palely illuminated set, blanketed by a light fog, evoked a misty lake, and the dancers’ occasional swimmer-like movements the elegant gestures of swans. But this was no Swan Lake telling a story, though the piece certainly evoked the same mood of longing and desire as the ballet. Rather, Blanco is a very inner work, a meditation on the subtle differences that emerge when four dancers, each starting with the same dance vocabulary, take the steps deeply within and make them their own, while maintaining an integrity to the whole piece. It was hard to comprehend how anyone could teach this beautiful choreography to dancers, given its complexity and continuous flow.

The next piece, Deep Down Dos, also by Cerrudo, took us deep underground into the bowels of the earth. Set to “Music for Underground Spaces” by the electro-acoustic composer and CSO composer-in-residence Mason Bates, the choreography featured a more traditional contemporary dance vocabulary that was infused with an industrial-strength muscularity tempered by great fluidity. On a stage illuminated by a bright beam of light suggesting a mine shaft, the nine dancers, costumed in black and copper, alternately shifted up and down, forward, backward and around each other like tectonic plates. The music occasionally pulsated with deep rumblings, suggesting an imminent volcano or Vulcan’s forge.

Is dance a language – or is language a dance? Is dance created on the street more “real” than that set on the stage? These were some of the questions posed in PHYSIKAL LINGUISTIKS, the first work created for HSDC by RUBBERBANDance Group founder and 2010 Princess Grace Awards Winner Victor Quijada.

Quijada’s roots in the hip-hop culture of L.A. is evident in this fun and provocative piece, and the pop-and-lock break dance moves he’s given the dancers offered HSDC yet another opportunity to stretch into new territory. However, the way Cerrudo challenged our dance-theater-language constructs was perhaps more interesting than the choreography itself.

In each of its sections, our initial assumptions about what we’re seeing were upset, forcing piquant reevaluations about the relationships between art, artists, audience and environment. For example, in the first section, one male dancer, dressed in typical skateboarder attire, was approached by four others, also dressed in “real” clothes, who began to touch him and set off a point-counterpoint of Gumby-like reaction. The interactions became more and more intense and complex, until finally all five were intertwining like some fast-growing mushroom. Just as things began to feel a bit hostile, they suddenly stopped and had a good laugh, turning our feeling of being witness to a real street scene upside-down.

In the final portion of the piece, a dancer rehearsing his moves called out to the stage manager to back up the music so he could try a certain step again. Problem was, he couldn’t effectively describe the step in any way that made sense to the stage manager – there are no “linguistics” adequate for these very physical moves.

The final piece of the evening was the breathtaking Arcangelo by renowned choreographer Nacho Duato, who also did the very tasteful scene and costume design. Billed as a “dance reflection of heaven and hell,” the piece was a gem of breathtaking beauty set to gorgeous Baroque music by Corelli and Scarlatti. The dancers learned the piece directly from Duato, which no doubt contributed to the very organic expression and execution of the eight dancers. What set this otherwise traditional choreography apart was the inclusion every so often of one small, deliberately “wrong” detail, such as foot flexed when it should be pointed, which somehow only served to reveal the total control, elegance and beauty of the other 90 percent of the dancer’s pose. This was a piece where the perfectly matched talents and mastery of the dancers was revealed to magic effect, as they combined in duets where each dancer was a perfect foil to the other.

With a fall series such as this, we will be looking forward eagerly to the rest of HSDC’s 2010-2011 season, where more new works will be performed. Save time to treat yourself to some magic during the Spring and Summer Series, March 17-20 and May 20-22, respectively.

For more information about HSDC’s 2010-11 season, subscriptions packages and single tickets call the HSDC Ticket Office at 312-850-9744 or visit hubbardstreetdance.com.