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Chicago Tribune
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: Hubbard Street Dance closes season with hopeful optimism — and Fosse
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's season finale coinciding with Beyoncé's Chicago dates is perhaps just a happy accident. But as last night's freaky dust storm tapered off and audiences settled into their seats at the Harris Theater, Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon's 'Sweet Gwen Suite' was a most poetic opening to the evening. The third of this trio of juicy morsels created for 1960s television specials is 'Mexican Breakfast,' which Beyoncé reimagined in her 'Single Ladies' video. It was a move that kicked off an existential conversation about artistic license, inspiration and ownership. She'd do it again in the 'Countdown' video. And again in 'Lemonade.' (Some say she plagiarized, but it's deeper than that.) In their Fall Series at Steppenwolf, we were forced to wait until the show was three-quarters finished to see dancers Cyrie Topete, Dominick Brown and Aaron Choate emerge in silhouette, hats tipped just right, puffs of cigarette smoke perfectly timed, bedazzled charro suits on point — all images now synonymous with Fosse. That program began with resident choreographer Aszure Barton's contemplative 'Return to Patience,' a tease in hindsight. But as a fitting bookend to Hubbard Street's 47th season, Fosse goes first, making it easy to follow instructions given at the top of every show by artistic director Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell: 'Get your whole life together.' Here, Barton goes last, with a revival of her 2002 'Blue Soup.' The point is, this program doesn't creep or simmer, it goes from zero to 60 and pretty much stays there the whole time. The night's only world premiere, Matthew Rushing's 'Beauty Chasers,' expands on a section of another of his works called 'Sacred Songs.' Rushing created that piece last year as an extrapolation of Alvin Ailey's 'Revelations' — the signature work of the late choreographer's eponymous company, led by Rushing for the past two years. For it, he excavated spirituals used for the original 'Revelations' that got cut as the hour-long ballet was shortened for ease in touring. Where 'Revelations' and 'Sacred Songs' express facets of the African American experience, 'Beauty Chasers' seems a kind of prequel — opening on Topete (who was simply extraordinary the whole night) in a pool of light, wearing flesh-toned underthings. Shota Miyoshi takes a turn, too, elegantly writhing in his own pool of stark white light, then Bianca Melidor. Rushing has said 'Beauty Chasers' loosely references the Holy Trinity from Christianity — the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. For me, it's more like Genesis. In the beginning, there was (designer Jason Lynch's) light, then man. And then there was jazz. And it was good. The piece really begins to cook as a recording of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders' 'Journey to Satchidananda' drops in, a celestial arrangement for keys, flute, bass and drums. The trio of dancers gradually dresses each time they re-enter the scene, increasingly noticing, accepting and literally leaning on one another. 'Beauty Chasers'' hybrid score (arranged by sound designer Dante Giramma) and costumer Dante Anthony Baylor's final look — red, white and black palazzo pants and matching beaded necklaces — beautifully complement Rushing's blend of modern, afro-contemporary and traditional West African vocabularies. To be sure, it's something new for Rushing, well outside his comfort zone. Thus, the underbelly feels raw and vulnerable — the rewards worth all the risk. A one-act behemoth closing the show, 'Blue Soup' has many hallmarks of what we've come to know of Barton's catalog, enough to make me wonder if this is where it all started. There's a signature tension between the literal and the imagined, moments of authenticity layered with sarcasm and vaudevillian veneer. There are just a few clues the piece came early in Barton's career — mainly in how 'Blue Soup' wears its influences on its big, blue, shoulder padded zoot suit sleeves. Created a year after David Lynch's 'Mulholland Drive,' 'Blue Soup' borrows images from the film, though not quite as literally as Beyoncé borrowed from 'Mexican Breakfast.' Choate appears alone, a vision in a blonde wig, sky-high stilettos, satiny blue robe and leotard — azure blue. Choate awkwardly lip syncs at an old-timey microphone. It's 'Sh-Boom' by The Chords — a bop, to be sure. It's far more ridiculous than 'Mulholland Drive's' 'this is the girl' screen test, a sort of blending of that and the film's darker sections. As the lens opens, the full company joins, facing upstage for what seems like a long time until Angelo Badalamenti's 'Jitterbug' drops in — another nod to 'Mulholland Drive.' Admittedly, 'Mulholland Drive' is canon to me, a very particular film released as a very particular moment in this critic's life. I am thus programmed to adore 'Blue Soup,' but you needn't know any of Barton's tongue-and-cheek references to see how the piece points at the rot underneath the shimmer of Hollywood and the fallibility of a dream. Then there's all this incredible dancing — highlights too numerous to list, though Choate in that blonde wig is certainly one. Another: Andrew Murdock in a phenomenal solo dancing between four downstage circles of light, a kind of washed-up showman torn between what's real and what's imagined. And another: Jacqueline Burnett, back on stage after a long absence as though no time has passed, in the piece's most authentic moments, joined briefly by Elliott Hammans, who somehow supports her from the exact opposite corner of the stage. Despite a big, rousing group dance set to Paul Simon's 'Pigs, Sheep & Wolves,' complete with unhinged, stomping diversions and a fair amount of well-timed hip thrusts, the piece ends rather unsatisfyingly before the company bows. But fear not, you will leave the theater satisfied. You see, unlike 'Mulholland Drive,' 'Blue Soup' is more shimmer than rot, appearing hopeful by comparison — maybe big, rousing group dances just do that. So does text by Maya Angelou ('Sounds Like Pearls' to be exact). Where Lynch gave Barton permission to be weird, Angelou lent Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Spring Series (4 stars) When: Through Sunday Where: Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph St. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes with one intermission Tickets: $46-$121 at 312-334-7777 and
New York Times
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Review: Can Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Find a New Voice?
The lights go up on two dancers, each isolated in a zone of light. As the two trade moves and trade places, recognizable elements keep recurring: the side-to-side head isolations of Indian dance, a duck walk from vogueing, a hip-hop crotch grab. The ingredients are familiar, but the combination is novel. Such is 'A Duo,' the most exciting of three New York premieres on Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's program at the Joyce Theater this week. Under the leadership of Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell since 2021, the company still seems caught in the international-style conformity that has restricted it in the past. Previous directors had been connected to Nederlands Dance Theater and beholden to its aesthetic. They tended to program the same modish choreographers as seemingly every other repertory troupe. By the evidence of this program, Fisher-Harrell has not rejected that legacy. The bill starts with a work by the ubiquitous Ohad Naharin (the only selection not new in New York) and ends with one by the Nederlands alum Johan Inger. All the way through, what's most entertaining feels slight. But along the way come intimations of something fresh and distinctive. The choreographer of 'A Duo' is Aszure Barton, the company's resident artist. The opening night cast, Shota Miyoshi and Cyrie Topete, performed with sass and flair. What makes the piece work, though, is the music: tracks by the Catalan musician Marina Herlop that mix rhythmic syllables of the Indian Carnatic tradition with her own made-up vocalizations; it's an ersatz sound turned original. Barton's choreography matches every detail in the music with precision, and her own collage of borrowings and personal eccentricities becomes persuasive. The Naharin selection is a vintage one, 'Black Milk' from 1990. It's a primitivist ritual set to the driving yet circling marimba loops of Paul Smadbeck. Five men, shirtless in culottes, mark themselves with a dark, muddy liquid from a bucket, then process in a bouncy march or leap up and out in closely overlapping order. The work has a master choreographer's clarity but not yet a unique voice. 'Into Being,' the wispiest of the premieres, is by Alice Klock and Florian Lochner, a choreographic duo that came together as members of Hubbard Street and now goes by the name Flock. Their style involves non-gendered partnering and cat's cradle formations based on an end-over-end tumbling that can resemble, in blurred approximation, capoeira or contact improvisations. Flock seems to be after a gentle flow, but the result is an energy that doesn't make it through the body and out; everything ends up limp. No such problem troubles Inger's 'Impasse,' a high-energy, crowd-pleasing closer. Inger's scenic design begins with a house outlined in tubes of light. From the house's door emerges Simone Stevens, an ingenuous country girl greeting the day. Two pals join and mirror her in cavorting, but then people of a different sort slink out from the door: confident cool kids dressed in fashionable black. The cool kids, ferociously led by Topete, impose their style and install a smaller house in front of the first. From that house spills a showgirl, a lounge singer, Max from 'Where the Wild Things Are' and a sad-scary clown. All join in on the antics, playing chicken with dancers seated on other dancers' shoulders or everyone doing a pony step together. Inger is clever with trick moves, as when the original three dancers get into a linear loop, two swinging the third by a leg before the third gets back in line to swing the next. Tracks by the Lebanese-French trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf support Inger's escalating structure with another eclectic mix: now Balkan, now Levantine, now Latin. Inger's message, pitting the perils of peer pressure against the power of community, is spelled out all too clearly in a program note as well as acted out onstage. But the self-pleased, knowingly manipulative tone — Topete repeatedly poking her head out of the door and yelling 'Wait!' — is itself an impasse. It kept me at a remove from full enjoyment. Giving their all to Inger's synthetic style, the Hubbard Street dancers look like kids playing dress up, not entirely at home. For a super-skilled company that I hope is growing out of its old conforming ways, that slight disconnect could be a good sign.
New York Times
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Making Dancers Fly, Hooked to a Tree or Soaring Off a Cliff
In 1990, Amelia Rudolph was hiking through Tuolumne Meadows, a stunning mountain pass in Yosemite National Park, when she had an epiphany on a shiny granite bluff: 'Could you make a performance here?' she wondered. 'Could you dance on a cliff?' Rudolph, a dancer in the Bay Area who trained with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, had just written a college thesis on dance and ritual and recently become an avid climber. Those experiences converged in her mountaintop revelation — and inspired her to make a dance while dangling from the climbing wall at the gym where she worked. That dance, though unrefined, was enthusiastically received. 'I realized I tapped into some part of our human imagination that loves to fly,' Rudolph, 61, said in a phone interview. From that seed grew Project Bandaloop, now just Bandaloop, a vertical dance company that fuses contemporary dance with climbing technique and technology. Using equipment, like harnesses, ropes and belay devices, Bandaloop can take dance's soaring, ethereal qualities to extremes and bring them to unlikely perpendicular surfaces like the rock face of El Capitan in California or Tianmen Mountain in China. 'The spirit of the company,' Rudolph said, celebrates 'the power and vulnerability of natural spaces.' Now Bandaloop's gravity-defying movement and ecological DNA have come to Broadway in the musical 'Redwood,' starring Idina Menzel, which opened on Feb. 13. At a rehearsal a few weeks earlier at the Nederlander Theater Menzel was on a platform, in a harness, a dozen feet off the ground in front of an enormous tree trunk — the set's dramatic visual centerpiece — preparing to step into the air during a song about release. 'Try coming off the platform with a sense of float,' said Melecio Estrella, Bandaloop's artistic director, from below. Menzel leaned forward and was suddenly swinging freely. She hugged the trunk then pushed off into a gentle spin. Estrella encouraged her to find more buoyancy by landing back on the tree in plié — a typical dance note, except she was sideways, and singing. (Estrella and Bandaloop are credited with the show's vertical choreography.) Earlier, Estrella spoke about the challenges of learning vertical choreography. 'It's not a form you can force,' he said, citing uneven surfaces and variations in momentum that can cause awkward landings or over-rotation in the air. 'It's a form you have to learn to ride.' Initially, Menzel said she got headaches from the upended motion. 'I'm using muscles I never use,' she said in an email. But the mix of risk and freedom, she added, has helped her 'return to an innocence and a playfulness that I yearn for.' In rehearsal, she again propelled herself from the tree, now into a backflip, achieving a suspended weightlessness that Estrella called 'loft' — a central ingredient in vertical choreography that's enhanced by the distance of a dancer from her anchor. (So the taller the dance surface, whether fake redwood or skyscraper, the more loft.) Loft was one of the core movement principles that Rudolph identified as she was establishing her company in Berkeley the 1990s with the goal of bringing together sport, art, nature and dance. 'We spent a lot of time innovating and building technique,' she said. In particular, she drew from the 'mentality of climbing, where you're moving through terrain quickly and safely and in a light way.' Without a permanent studio until 2003, Bandaloop rehearsed wherever it could — climbing gyms, rented walls at the nearby university, even the side of a highway, where a police officer once asked Rudolph what she was doing. She replied, 'I'm developing a dance form.' There was some precedent. In 1970, Trisha Brown, the pioneering postmodern choreographer, presented the now celebrated piece 'Man Walking Down the Side of a Building.' And Northern California, where Rudolph lived and worked, was also home to other dance artists working above the ground, like Joanna Haigood and Jo Kreiter. But Bandaloop stood out because of its sense of scale, drama and artistry, and it attracted high-profile commissions. A dance on the Space Needle in Seattle for the Bumbershoot Festival in 1996 raised the troupe's visibility. Later, the group worked with Pink on her performance at the American Music Awards in 2017 and danced on St. Paul's Cathedral in London, in 2023. 'Bandaloop has had incredible opportunities that most dance companies don't have,' Rudolph said, 'because we have the 'wow' factor.' But that wow factor, its whiff of spectacle (a word she likes to avoid), means Bandaloop hasn't always been embraced by traditional dance presenters who tend to program for proscenium stages. So the company embraced nontraditional collaborations, like municipal partnerships and corporate work that came with bigger paychecks. 'We will cross into that world and learn from it,' Rudolph said. 'We gain from it economically and then feed it back into the art.' That money has helped the company put down roots in Oakland, where it recently signed a 20-year lease on an 8,000 square-foot, light-filled studio, allowing it to increase its educational offerings and introduce more aspiring performers to its distinct style. (In 2020, Rudolph handed the Bandaloop reins to Estrella, an environmental activist and longtime dancer in the troupe. She remains an adviser.) In the early days, Bandaloop was composed of roughly half dancers and half climbers. Now, all company members have professional dance experience, though many also come from athletic backgrounds. 'Divers do really well,' Estrella said, citing their spatial awareness. He added, 'It takes a certain kind of dancer to want this kind of adventure.' When Estrella joined Bandaloop in 2002 from the contemporary dance world, he had never been on a climbing wall. 'I didn't really know what I was walking into,' he said. But he was attracted to the group's thrilling physicality, as well as its melding of art, nature and politics. He grew up in Sonoma County among trees — his aunt's front yard had three giant redwoods. 'Those are the forests that I played in as a kid,' he said. As a teenager, he became involved in environmentalism, learning about direct action and how to support tree sitters. This was around the time when Julia Butterfly Hill lived in a redwood for more than two years to protest logging. (Her story partly inspired 'Redwood,' and it briefly figures into the show.) With Bandaloop, Estrella found a company in which dance and activism have long been intertwined. Bandaloop has created many works and community events promoting environmental stewardship, partnered with national parks, and recently engaged a consultant to evaluate its climate footprint. The company has also shared its technical and artistic expertise with climate activists and organizations like Greenpeace and Save the Redwoods League, imparting its safety protocols and advising on style, including what to wear and how to climb with flair to attract media attention. 'Let's talk about costuming, let's talk about color, let's talk about the movement of dance,' said Thomas Cavanagh, an environmental activist who began as Bandaloop's operations manager in 1998 and now serves as its executive director. Bandaloop's ecological values and showmanship made it an obvious fit for 'Redwood,' about a grieving woman who finds connection in a forest and solace high in a towering tree. But the show's director, Tina Landau, was unaware of the company's activist roots when she first reached out. She was simply drawn to the poetry of the group's work. 'They really understood and captured what I'm attracted to in the metaphor of flight,' she said. Later, she realized they were 'kindred spirits' in their worldview as well. During a preproduction excursion to redwood forests with Menzel, Landau noticed the caring way that the Bandaloop team related to the trees. 'A lot of what we learned came from watching them,' she said. In addition to its sensitivity to the natural world, Bandaloop brings with it 'our culture of safety,' Cavanagh said. The company has never had a serious injury or incident, he said, only the 'bruises, bumps and abrasions' that come with working in unusual locations. Bandaloop's spoken pre-climb safety checklist, which all climbers use in some form, even made its way into 'Redwood's' script, an acknowledgment of the danger always present when operating at great heights, and of the fear that comes with it. Cavanagh described that fear, an inherent part of Bandaloop's work, with an automobile metaphor: 'We like to say we keep fear in the passenger seat,' he said. 'It's not in the driver's seat, but it's very much in the car.' In other words, when you keep fear close, it can't surprise you. When 'Redwood' actors felt scared in the air, Landau said, she learned from Bandaloop how to navigate those moments by slowing down. As Estrella explained, 'We move only as fast as their fear allows.' Since the 'Redwood' premiere, the company has been developing a site-specific work called 'Flock,' the final part of a trilogy addressing the climate crisis. 'Part of what we have to deal with right now in climate is our grief,' Estrella said of the work. Considering such existential issues, he says he often wonders why it's important to bring audiences together around art. 'For me, it's great purpose is to have a place to feel.' That's been true for Bandaloop for decades, whether the group is performing in a public park in Oakland or a storied Broadway theater. To be part of a project like 'Redwood' feels to Rudolph like a full-circle moment. 'The connection between the human body, the human spirit and natural spaces,' she said. 'It's so beautiful, because that's where Bandaloop started.'
Chicago Tribune
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: Hubbard Street Dance is back on familiar ground for its winter series
It's not a time capsule. Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's revival of Ohad Naharin's 'Black Milk' after more than 20 years in the vault is more a wink and a nod. After several seasons dibble-dabbling across the aesthetic spectrum — from Bob Fosse to Aszure Barton and everything in between — the Winter Series on now at the Harris Theater returns to familiar ground. That's not to say the Hubbard Street of 2002 was somehow better; rather, artistic director Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell projects confidence in the 47-year-old institution, as if to say, 'Yeah, we still do that, too.' Naharin first created 'Black Milk' in 1985 for Israel's Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, later adding it to a compilation of seven dances called 'Minus One.' It's miles away from 'Minus 16,' Hubbard Street's first-ever acquisition by the ground-breaking choreographer, which propelled the company into a new era near the end of founder Lou Conte's tenure as artistic director. 'Black Milk,' acquired two years after 'Minus 16,' is pre-Gaga, the counter-technique Naharin developed, which has informed decades of dancemaking. Here, he draws from his background in the Martha Graham Dance Company and even the School of American Ballet, asking much of 'Black Milk's' five bare-chested dancers (which on Thursday included Aaron Choate, Elliot Hammans, Jack Henderson, Andrew Murdock and David Schultz). 'Black Milk' is thus just as hard as anything else Naharin's made, if less idiosyncratic — the stoicism of those techniques busted open with a deep-kneed, guttural vocabulary and thrilling partnering. Then there's the symbolism. Naharin offers little context apart from a silver pail of dark sludge methodically smeared across the dancers' faces, chests and thighs. Schultz is the quasi-protagonist, here, often moving separately from the rest, seemingly resistant to indoctrination into whatever discipleship they're apparently part of. By turns elegant and feral, there's a sense these dancers have each other's backs, even as Schultz breaks away to wash himself clean. But the vibe is more 'Get up, you fool!' than 'You got this, friend.' It's a piece that's aged well, even when put against three striking others from the 'now.' James Gregg makes his Hubbard Street debut with the evening's only world premiere, called 'Within the Frame.' The title is both a literal and figurative exploration, with four dancers spending most of their time confined to a square, white section of floor acting as the quartet's sandbox. They're rarely onstage altogether; Gregg was originally tasked with making a duet but apparently couldn't help himself. Indeed, 'Within the Frame' doesn't feel particularly communal in the way long, deep engagements do. Rather, it comes across more like the solidarity and community felt among strangers on a train — people with a common goal and, maybe, nothing else in common. Gregg prescribes periodic breaks from his luscious phrases; the dancers to step out completely or simply turn away and put their hands in their pockets. (Pockets! In dance costumes!!). Gregg's boundary-busting aesthetic draws from a wide variety of styles, honed from a storied performance career that started in Chicago. In a way, 'Within the Frame' interrogates that collection of experiences spanning jazz, contemporary, hip hop and vogue, but it's not navel-gazing. It feels for and about the quartet (Dominick Brown, Choate, Michele Dooley and Cyrie Topete), who thrive in 'Within the Frame's' gorgeous, monochromatic environment — pro forma for Gregg — built by Slick Jorgenson (lighting) and Hogan McLaughlin (costumes) and surrounded by a similarly multilayered score by Ben Waters. Hubbard Street alums Alice Klock and Florian Lochner, collectively called FLOCK, crafted 'Into Being' last year for Hubbard Street's series at the MCA. Somehow, in the cavernous-by-comparison Harris Theater, it feels more intimate, perhaps because of its placement in an otherwise chilly, mostly black-and-white program. 'Into Being' radiates complexity and warmth, and not just because of the bronze and gold separates its five dancers wear. It's also our first real glimpse at dancer Bianca Melidor, an expat of Dallas Black Dance Theatre who joined the company this fall. Though early in her career, Melidor already brings a wealth of maturity and nuance to her long, luxurious solo, a mirage placed midway through FLOCK's mostly meditative, meticulously crafted world. Then there's 'Impasse,' a fantastically wacky full company piece closing the program. Like 'Into Being,' 'Impasse' premiered at Hubbard Street last year and hasn't yet gotten the play time it deserves. Part jazz funeral, part 'Appalachian Spring,' Inger sends Schultz, Henderson and Simone Stevens in and out of a 2-D house positioned upstage multiple times. They seem shocked — appalled even — by what they encounter, which gets weirder every time: a mob of black-clothed people who seem to be having a better time than them, then a grab-bag of bizarre characters ranging from a crowned shirtless prince to a clown that's a little too close to Rob Zombie's Captain Spaulding for comfort. Maybe it's Narnia. Or perhaps what Alice finds beyond the looking-glass. Whatever it is, it's fleeting. A white-streaked black backdrop descends on this wonderful world, forcing our three adventurers to squeeze underneath, barely managing to escape. It's not immediately clear why they'd want to leave such a weird and wonderful joy bomb, a hesitancy sure shared by every audience member that night. Lauren Warnecke is a freelance critic. When: Through Sunday Where: Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph St. Originally Published: February 14, 2025 at 11:19 AM CST
