The atmosphere was ebullient at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s 47th season Fall Series at Steppenwolf, featuring the return of beloved works by Kyle Abraham, Lar Lubovitch, and HSDC resident artist Aszure Barton, as well as the hotly anticipated company premiere of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon’s Sweet Gwen Suite.
Sweet Gwen Suite—originally created as three separate pieces (“Mexican Shuffle,” “Cool Hand Luke,” and “Mexican Breakfast”) for a Bob Hope television special in 1968 and The Ed Sullivan Show in 1969—was adapted and reconstructed with additional choreography by Linda Haberman as a single performance commissioned by the Verdon Fosse Legacy for the New York City Center Fall for Dance Festival in 2021 (with New York City Ballet soloist Georgina Pazcoguin in Verdon’s role). HSDC is the first company to collaborate with the Verdon Fosse Legacy to present Fosse’s work.
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Fall Series
Through 11/24: Thu-Sat 7 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, hubbardstreetdance.com; sold out, but $30 standby tickets sold one hour before performance (admission not guaranteed; refunds given if seats not available)
The curtain opens on the company in serene array, clothed in white costumes reminiscent of martial arts gis for Barton’s return to patience (2015, HSDC premiere 2023). In a strong echo of George Balanchine’s Serenade, with ceremonial simplicity they open their feet as one to first position and take a long lean to the side, as if they are not receiving but embodying the beam of light that tiptoes in from stage right. To the sound of solo piano (Caroline Shaw’s Gustave Le Gray, a contemplative response to and adaptation of Chopin’s Mazurka in a minor, Op 17, no. 4), the work proceeds from the group to a series of duets and back with softness and exquisite technique made visible primarily by absence: absence of any excess, whether that be vibration to the body or semblance of performance. Instead, one experiences balance, stillness, gravity, shared space—a beautiful sense of quiet, breath, and harmony.
Its very opposite trots in next, in the form of Abraham’s blockbuster, no-holds-barred, shiny-unitarded, emphatically virtuosic, riotously individualistic solo Show Pony (2018, HSDC premiere 2023), danced with unstoppable charisma by Shota Miyoshi on opening night (Choate alternates in the piece). To percussion composed by JLin, Miyoshi appeared as a spark, almost radiating the special gleaming down on him on the darkened stage. As the light (designed by Dan Scully) opens and closes the area for performance, the dancer appears sometimes to stand on the ground and sometimes to hover in space, profoundly conscious of being watched, a star in all its senses.
Lubovitch’s Prelude to a Kiss (2005, HSDC 2023) begins with one dancer (Alexandria Best) hanging like a boa from the neck of the other (Elliot Hammans), arching across him to hold her own foot in a translated Natarajasana. The duet that proceeds is suggestively gymnastic yet danced with cool distance, often with no eye contact. The kiss, when it comes, holds the purported heat of all that preceded it—though in fact and in act, everything has already happened.
It’s all about the hips, hands, and hats in Sweet Gwen Suite, which begins with an architectural arrangement of three dancers (Cyrie Topete, Dominick Brown, and Aaron Choate) that kicks into action with a bump of the pelvis. The three pleather-clad vaquero types, glistening with rhinestone embellishments (costume design by Bobby Pearce), are too cool for school, grinding out their cigarettes with an infectious swivel of the hips that evolves into a twist, a ride, a twerk, and more. No gesture goes unnoticed, however small—every clap, snap, nod, and look is its own event, calculated to seduce, deliciously. At the opening, attended by Fosse and Verdon’s daughter Nicole, a knockout performance, especially by fiery Topete, made the work a pure pleasure and brought the audience to its feet. If this is just the beginning of HSDC’s partnership with the Verdon Fosse Legacy, Chicago is already salivating for the next.
Fosse’s presence bleeds through to Barton’s BUSK (2009), originally created for Aszure Barton & Artists and now a signature work for HSDC, as a lone man (Hammans) sleeping on a stoop shapeshifts into an entertainer with the simple addition of a hat and a hand wave. A band of supplicants, sacred and profane, appears at times rambunctious, at times meditative—vulnerable as they cluster into a heap on the floor and prostrate themselves with a hand outstretched to receive.
Mesmerizing solos by Andrew Murdock and Miyoshi express longing for flight through supple torsos initiating wingbeats that stiffen into outstretched arms, a motif like the repeated vision of Icarus falling from the sky. At the end, they all jump again and again into the air with arms extending to the sky, hovering an instant, and then falling back down, feet slapping against the obdurate ground. The yearning and melancholy of this great work of human life reads strongly in Steppenwolf’s intimate house.
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