By Tara Mitton Catao
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago made a great impression Friday night while making its first appearance as part of the Duncan Theatre’s popular dance series in Lake Worth.
The polished company that started more than 30 years ago as a jazz and tap dance troupe performing in the parks of Chicago has morphed into a top-notch contemporary dance organization that performs all over the world. The works presented were taut and dense and the dancing onstage glistened with rich movement dynamics that the company members seemed to inhabit with ease and clarity. Under the direction of Glenn Edgerton, HSDC’s inherent sense of sleekness was enhanced by a sense of real substance.
Out of Keeping, the first dance on the program, set the tone for the absorbing evening of repertory works. Choreographed by company member Penny Saunders, a West Palm Beach native and a graduate of the Harid Conservatory in Boca Raton, its movement vocabulary was refined and unexpected with its many stops, arm gestures, pliant pliés and quick impulse initiations. Though the ensemble unison work was not as clean as it was in the other works in the program, the 10 dancers were articulate as they marked out their steps, drawing us into the intimacy of their movement in space.
A predominant ingredient was the lighting and set design by Michael Mazzola. The side stage drapes were pulled back to expose a stark white backdrop rising up from a white dance floor —a huge, blank canvas. The LED lights that were visible on the side booms had a different quality that chiseled out the forms of the dancers as they criss-crossed the space, creating streaks of color from the rich palette of their costumes.
In Out of Keeping, five couples wove in and out of each other creating other alliances but it was the seamless and unusual partnering work (which was seen throughout the whole program) that was most impressive. Some of the most memorable lifts looked as if they were constructed from retrograding contact improv work. Jacqueline Burnett and Jesse Bechard, the lead couple, especially stood out in their duet dancing.
In the post-performance discussion, Saunders mentioned that she had just removed a large section and inserted a completely new section — as well as rearranged the order of the remaining sections — and that we had just seen the premiere of a new, reconfigured Out of Keeping.
But the work that really packed the wow was N.N.N.N. by William Forsythe. It was — to put it simply — completely fascinating. While watching the dancers’ skill in initiating and reacting to each other with highly complicated gestural and interactive movement sequences, audience amazement grew exponentially as the work progressed. A drop of focus from one of the dancers during the 20-or-so-minute dance would have been disastrously noticeable.
Dressed in late morning, comfy clothes, two men and two women were deceivingly relaxed in the action/reaction initiative and its timing. They looked as if they could have been improvising, but the finesse and skill of reaction made one realize that it was set movement. Using a “breath score” as well as visual and sound cues, there probably was some leeway in the timing but the finesse in how Burnett, Jeffery Duffy, Emilie Leriche and Kevin J. Shannon carried it out was extremely impressive.
Its American choreographer, the internationally recognized Forsythe, has spent most of his creative life in Germany and is renowned for having pushed the envelope choreographically in the ballet world. HSDC is the first American company that Forsythe has allowed to perform N.N.N.N. because HSDC was willing to commit to the tremendous amount of rehearsal time required to do it right.
It was interesting to note that a completely different cast performed N.N.N.N. on Saturday night. It is also performed with both an all-male and an all-female cast, which seems to illustrate HSDC’s willingness to fully embrace its artistic challenges.
Works from Spanish choreographers dominated the rest of the program. Alejandro Cerrudo, who is the company’s resident choreographer, presented an excerpt from his work Second to Last. Cerrudo used Spiegel im Spiegel, a beautiful piece of music by the Estonian “sacred minimalist”Arvo Pärt.
In the excerpt, five couples beautifully performed one duet after another, showing off once again the company’s excellent partnering skills, but it was the performance of the first couple, Alice Klock and Michael Gross, that clung in my memory.
Closing the program was Nacho Duato’s Gnawa, which was created for HSDC in 2005. Using music that was a mixture of African drum rhythms and vocals that were reminiscent of flamenco music overlaid with water and bird sounds, Duato created a well-crafted work that evoked a Mediterranean flavor infused with mystical quality.
In a backdrop of seven bare-chested men dressed in ivory pants with matador frills and seven women wearing the ever-present black dresses of Spain, couple Ana Lopez and Bechard stood out dancing in flesh tones. They began and ended the work, perhaps symbolizing the spirit of land as the ensemble met and divided at some times weighted and other times lifted upwards to the sky. Again, the company’s partnering was just beautiful : flawless and fluid.
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago is a tasteful, completely contemporary and highly accomplished company of dancers that now radiates a European flair. They have come a long way from the days of performing founding artistic director Lou Conte’s The ’40s, a toe-tapping signature work that helped launch them down the road to their success.