Hubbard Street Dance Chicago is in its 47th year of cutting-edge performances and innovations in modern dance. The Winter Series at the Harris Theater Millennium Park opens with a dance that melds shape-shifting elegance and sensuous martial arts elements. It is cold outside, but this is just the thing to get your circulation moving and turn up the heat. The opening dance was a classic that Hubbard Street premiered in 2002.
Ohan Naharin choreographed Black Milk and created a dance style known as gaga movement language. Gaga can be defined as an intuitive art form that pushes the dancer’s limits in movement and invites inner emotions as an integral part of choreography. Black Milk has the vibe of a tribal ritual, with the dancers smudging themselves with a black substance. The music is percussive, with a marimba as the main sound. It could be interpreted as tropical or middle-Eastern, as Naharin is Israeli-born. The dancers intertwine in one continuous chain of movement in flowing costumes designed by Rakefet Levy. An element of baptism is a sign of renewal. I found it moving and hopeful for the turbulent times we are experiencing.
Into Being was choreographed by Hubbard Street alumni Alice Klock and Florian Lochner, known as FLOCK. Five dancers perform this work of forming and expanding boundaries. It feels joyously visceral, with bodies making one form and then dividing. Into Being feels like life at its most basic—intentional and graceful. FLOCK’s choreography is a glance through the microscope and deconstructing the elements of movement.
The third performance was the world premiere of Within the Frame, choreographed by James Gregg. The work is original yet fits the Hubbard Street aesthetic and the recurring theme of boundaries. Gregg’s work doesn’t fit the standard contemporary dance mold, making it a good fit for this troupe. Within the Frame is more aggressive, as if demanding space. The choreography plays tricks on the eye with continuous loops of movement. This demonstrates athleticism, blending tones and shapes, defying gravity, and makes it look as easy as breathing. The music for Gregg’s creation was composed by Ben Waters, which is notable because Waters is also a professional dancer. I love the symbiosis of bringing a dance experience to a complementary art form such as composing. For most soundtracks, it seems the script and action are the launching pad for the music. Within the Frame breaks the mold, and it would be interesting to see each artist’s process.
The finale is a dazzling and frenetic funhouse performance called Impasse. The choreographer is Johan Inger, who danced with Nederlands Dans Theater and went on to create dances for troupes across Europe, including his native Sweden. I am curious about the Swedish artistic sensibility and collective vision of dance. The Joffrey Ballet’s Midsommer Night’s Dream was a surreal melange of visuals celebrating midsommer with Swedish traditions and symbols. Inger takes Hubbard Street through the looking glass and weaves through a warren of surreal images.
The staging for this dance is by Fernando Hernando Magadan. The dancers enter through a door framed in light. The door changes sizes, and the lighting design by Tom Visser elevates the mysterious carnival atmosphere.
This performance includes the entire troupe entering, disrupting, and distorting the framework of tradition. The costumes and characters explode in Impasse with a Vegas showgirl, a dancer in a bizarre pink suit, and a pillbox hat spun through the line. The topper is the clown in a purple suit lumbering through the dancers. I grew up with supermarket rides with grimacing clown faces on them. This took me back to the A&P on the West Side in the 60s, and I thought it was brilliant. Lines of dancers seem to fly weightless in the background while orgiastic mayhem filled the downstage. The music by Amos Ben-Tal and Ibrahim Maalouf took the performance into wonderland territory. Ben-Tal is a composer and choreographer deeply rooted in the Netherlands club scene. Maalouf is a French trumpeter born in Beirut. He has composed film scores for Claude Lelouch and collaborated with hip-hop performers like A$AP ROCKY. Impasse is a wild spin around the carnival and the perfect finale for an exquisite evening.
The final performance of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s Winter Series is today, February 16, at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. Tickets are available here.
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