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Steps Lively: Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in action

Hubbard Street company keeps Twyla Tharp's dances alive

By Laura Molzahn

Watching Twyla Tharp's Nine Sinatra Songs and Fait Accompli, it is hard to believe that the same choreographer set both. Yet she did, and just a year apart--one in 1982, the other in 1983--back when she had her own company.

Today, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, having learned these works, among others, by Tharp, has become a human repository of some of the most brilliant, exciting dances of the late 20th century, keeping this choreography alive. Both pieces will be part of the group's guest performance for the San Jose Cleveland Ballet this weekend.

Nine Sinatra Songs is a nostalgic look back at a time when people believed in romance, no holds barred, no apologies. A mirrored ball flashes above the dancers, who are dressed in evening attire designed by Oscar de la Renta. Divided into nine sections--two ensemble numbers and one apiece for seven couples--the work features Sinatra recordings from the '50s, sung with inimitable passion if not always on key: "One More for the Road," "Forget Domani," "All the Way," "My Way" (twice).

The style is ballroom dance, but with Tharp's unmistakable stamp. There's the young couple, for example, who manage to lose track of each other, who are so into twirling that they get dizzy and stagger. And there is the couple so boozy they seem to melt all over each other. In an apache dance set to "That's Life," the man hauls the woman up from the floor hand over hand like a sailor hauling in rope. But despite the perverse touches--Tharp's specialty--Nine Sinatra Songs remains a fantasy of love requited.

You could call Fait Accompli a fantasy, but it's a fantasy of apocalypse and annihilation. This punk piece is set to a commissioned rock score by David Van Tieghem that also features the sounds of explosions, sirens, klaxons and unintelligible radio voices; the air is filled with smoke at times.

The eight women and eight men, dressed in workout clothes, are at first like automatons, moving mechanically, quickly. (Tharp was boxing at the time, so there are lots of jabs and feints.) You notice the hinges in the dancer's bodies: The waist, the elbow, the knee. There's no differentiation of the sexes, and certainly no romance. In fact, Tharp in her autobiography, Push Comes to Shove, calls Fait Accompli one in a series of dances for "power women." As the piece goes on, the dancers become less mechanical but even more driven, picking up the already grueling pace.

These dances are linked by their stylishness, their bratty intelligence, their variety and their endless attention to detail. They're a perfect match with Hubbard Street, because that's how this Chicago company works.

Tharp and Hubbard Street are also a good fit because neither is easily categorized: Tharp is too fun and flip to be called a modern choreographer; uses none of the vocabulary of jazz dance but captures its energy; and has choreographed for ballet companies from the Joffrey to the American Ballet Theatre. Hubbard Street is equally adept and eclectic.

Hubbard Street has grown tremendously in popularity and artistic scope since its beginnings in 1978, largely because artistic director Lou Conte has high standards, both for dancerly technique and for entertainment value.

The troupe started out as small potatoes--four members who danced at senior citizen centers, often sweeping the rooms themselves before performances--but Conte insisted they be paid. He wanted them to consider themselves professionals.

A Broadway dancer himself who once studied with the Joffrey on scholarship, Conte expected hard work during rehearsals and polished, "effortless" performances. Unlike many companies, Hubbard Street never relied much on public funding, but it so delighted audiences from the start that it won a loyal following and was able to expand slowly but steadily.

Over the years, Hubbard Street has commissioned work by Margo Sappington (closely associated with the Joffrey) and Daniel Ezralow (a dancer with Pilobolus who later formed ISO) and have performed David Parsons' popular, humorous The Envelope (set to a melange of Rossini overtures).

Hubbard Street is now working with an exciting new choreographer, Kevin O'Day. Once a member of Tharp's company, he moved with her to American Ballet Theatre for her brief sojourn there. He starred as the boxer in her 1989 Everlast, made for ABT, then partnered Tharp in her seminal 1991 Men's Piece.

After that, like her, he became essentially a freelance choreographer. His first commission, Quartet for IV (sometimes one, two or three), was for Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project; a year after White Oak performed it, in 1994, Hubbard Street had snatched up this quirky, supple dance for two couples. This is the third and final work on their program here.

Quartet for IV, set to a string composition by Kevin Volans performed by the Kronos Quartet, begins softly and progresses to more definite movement. Like Tharp's choreography, it's designed to reveal the characters of its dancers, first in broad strokes, then in greater detail. The first couple are more straightforward and confident; the second, vulnerable and moody. But that's only by contrast. Overall, the work is as lively and jovial as a barn dance, full of Tharpian squiggles and twists.

Hubbard Street is continuing its relationship with both choreographers: Tharp and O'Day alike are in the process of setting new works on the company. You could say, without stretching the truth, that they've fallen in love with the Chicago troupe.

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Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, presented by San Jose Cleveland Ballet, performs Friday-Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 1:30 and 7:30pm at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, 255 Almaden Blvd., San Jose. Tickets are $15-$50. (BASS or 408/288-2800)


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Laura Molzahn writes about dance for The Chicago Reader.

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