Hubbard Street: A New Destination

Jiri Kylian’s magnificent Nederlands Dans Theater already operates two satellite companies in the Hague, but a splendid performance Sunday by Hubbard Street Dance Chicago suggested that the Windy City now holds a fourth Nederlands ensemble--or at least an unofficial new spinoff.

Hubbard Street artistic director Jim Vincent came to Chicago in 2000 after a career that included 12 years as a dancer and ballet master with Nederlands. At the Alex Theatre in Glendale, he presented an exciting four-part program dominated by European Modernism: two works commissioned for Kylian’s dancers and one very much in the same style.

Only Trey McIntyre’s accomplished sextet “Split” reflected pre-Vincent Hubbard Street traditions in its emphasis on breezy, buoyant jazz dancing. Recorded Art Blakey percussion invited high-velocity attacks, but McIntyre never asked his dancers to outrun the accompaniment. Instead, he focused on deft, gymnastic partnering switcheroos--initially in a trio for Kendra Moore, Francisco Avina and Joseph P. Pantaleon, and later in a duet for Massimo Pacilli and Mary Nesvadba. The addition of Yael Levitin inspired playful new partnerships and a finale loaded with rapid lighting, costume and backdrop changes before the cast marched shoulder to shoulder into a sly fake-out ending.

So much for Hubbard Street Americana. Vincent’s own “counter/part” may have been choreographed in Chicago, but it pursued a Nederlands aesthetic in its unorthodox juxtapositions: alternating passages of orchestral and keyboard Bach that accompanied dramatic shifts between social and personal perspectives.

Identified as a “new work in preview,” it began with the ensemble in surging formalist choreography wearing abstractions of Baroque clothes. Soon, however, Vincent introduced the nearly nude Mario Alberto Zambrano as an embodiment of pure impulse, absolute physical freedom.

In other intimate passages, however, Lauri Stallings portrayed a more enigmatic figure: a woman handed from man to man, constricted and diminished by each partnership but always remarkably passionate in seeking what Zambrano represented.

Unfortunately, Vincent left her plight under-defined in an ending that layered and then integrated soloists and ensemble, making Zambrano something of a catalyst but sacrificing the deeper implications of the work in favor of structural symmetry.

In contrast, two Nederlands acquisitions by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, proved unconcerned with structure or depth but sought new pathways to dance expression by breaking as many rules as possible.

Against English folk and theater ballads, Naharin’s duet “Passomezzo” undermined partnering conventions, asking Gregory Sample to support Robyn Mineko Williams while walking on his knees, or prone or with his hand covering her face. An exchange of roles and then a dodgy, hyperkinetic equality ended the experiment.

Naharin’s “Minus 16” used an archive of cha-cha and bossa nova singles to accompany an assault on the whole entrenched theatrical status quo. One section, for example, found the dancers inviting audience members to join them on the stage--not just a brief, token moment of contact, but an extended essay in hands-across-the-footlights camaraderie.

Another section involved solos accompanied by the dancers’ own taped confessions: everything from accounts of family discord to a catalog of tattoos and a recipe for guacamole. And whenever the various activities began to look random or anarchic, Naharin threw in passages of impossibly wild, flung-out group dancing--executed in perfect unison.

He also proved shameless in stealing from himself: The formal choreography in “Minus 16”--dancers seated in chairs executing a complex cycle of movement motifs--came straight from his “Axioma 7,” performed locally by the Rambert Dance Company in 1998.

The big question “Minus 16” raised is what we really want from a dance event--a nice, neat display up on a stage or maximum knowledge of and proximity to the dancers themselves? With a cheering ovation Sunday, the Alex audience voted for the latter.