It’s hip to be Hubbard
Buzzworthy Chicago dance troupe returns to Bay Area.
Much like the bustling, scrappy and creatively charged city that it calls home, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago takes great pride in what it’s built over the years.
Boasting a world-class cadre of dancers and an ever-expanding repertoire that embodies the company’s international scope, Hubbard Street is known for both cultivating young choreographers within its ranks and commissioning a diverse roster of leading dancemakers.
The company returns to UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall for a three-day residency Friday through Sunday, its first Bay Area performances since 2013’s epic collaboration with Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet, “Azimuth.” This Cal Performances engagement couldn’t be more different. Rather than premiering one major commission, Hubbard Street presents two programs designed to showcase the unusual scope of the company’s repertoire, including works by the great Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato (“Jardí Tancat”), Israel’s Ohad Naharin (“Decadance/Ignore”) and Canada’s Crystal Pite (“Grace Engine” and “Solo Echo”).
“It’s a beautiful expression of the range the company is capable of,” says Glenn Edgerton, Hubbard Street’s artistic director since 2009. “Every program we’re bringing in something new. We’re always trying to reach out to emerging choreographers and give them a platform. I like to think we’re curating a library of some of the era’s great choreography.”
The Hubbard Street library has acquired works by some of the buzziest choreographers around, like 24-year-old Canadian phenomenon Emma Portner. Something of a dancemaking prodigy, she was building an avid following on social media when Justin Bieber tapped her to choreograph and star in the 2015 video for his song “Life Is Worth Living.”
As part of Saturday night’s Program B, Hubbard Street presents the Bay Area premiere of excerpts from the company’s commission for Portner (“For All Its Fury”) and her frequent collaborator Teddy Forance ( “Everything Must Go”), which both feature a score by indemand songwriter, producer and musician Blood Orange (aka Dev Hynes) performed live by Third Coast Percussion.
Hubbard Street brought the Grammy Award-winning new music ensemble into the mix, which turned out to be an ideal vehicle for the dense and coruscating music of Hynes, who has worked with Portner since she was 17. While her collaboration with the company was disrupted in the fall when she was sidelined by a serious medical issue, she sings Hubbard Street’s praises.
“You just won’t find a more open, kind and generous group of artists out there,” Portner writes in an email. “Eighty percent of the piece was a result of experimenting with the dancers in studio, and 20 percent was a result of my pre-dreaming. I got really ill midprocess and the company handled all of the choreographic curve balls so gracefully.”
Edgerton started hearing Portner’s name mentioned a few years ago and decided to check out her work. “I got this great sense from her,” he says. “She was obviously very talented. She’s got a unique movement quality you don’t see every day. In five years, everybody is going to be pulling on Emma to make work.”
Or maybe they’ll come calling this year. She originated the choreography for the Manchester Opera House’s “Bat Out of Hell: The Musical,” a hit production in Europe and Canada (based on the quintuple-platinum 1977 Meat Loaf album with songs by Jim Steinman) that might well end up on Broadway in 2019. She’s working on a commission for the New York City Ballet and two other prestigious ballet companies, developing her own music, and making her way into the world of film, “seeing how my movement knowledge can translate into acting,” she writes.
Portner is just the latest in a long line of young choreographers championed by the company. Program A on Friday and Sunday highlights Hubbard Street’s success at nurturing budding talent, with Alejandro Cerrudo’s “Lickety-Split,” set to songs by Devendra Banhart. The company’s resident choreographer spent several years as a Hubbard Street dancer and it’s “the first piece he ever did for Hubbard, a duet he created in a workshop setting,” Edgerton says. “We asked him to expand on that duet and it turned out to be an 18-minute piece that’s really endearing and has a sense of camaraderie.”
Since “Lickety-Split,” the Spanish-born Cerrudo has created dozens of works for Hubbard Street and other companies around the world. Set to songs sung by Dean Martin, his piece “PacoPepePluto” serves as something of a palate cleanser in Program B on Saturday. With three solos by male dancers wearing dance belts, “It’s like seeing them caught unawares dancing in their backyard without anyone watching,” Edgerton says.
More than an eclectic roster of works, Edgerton’s thoughtful programming brings out a variety of connections and dynamics running through the dance world. Cerrudo has been deeply inspired by fellow Spaniard Duato, and Pite got her start as a choreographer when she was a star in the company of William Forsythe, whose quartet of male dancers, “N.N.N.N.,” is part of Program A with her kinetic “Grace Engine.”
“Crystal got the bug to choreograph in the Forsythe company,” Edgerton says.