Hubbard Street dancers Connie Shiau and Alysia Johnson. Concept by Rena Butler/ Photo: Todd Rosenberg
RECOMMENDED
The Hubbard Street winter series is dedicated to new works created by members of the company. It’s the second year in a row the company has given the stage over to its budding in-house choreographers and “danc(e)volve: New Works Festival” is already a welcome tradition. The program features repertory pieces by Florian Lochner, Alice Klock (this being her second time choreographing for Hubbard Street) and Rena Butler, who joined the company in 2016. We visited a rehearsal and spoke with Klock and Butler about the new dances they created for the company they call home.
You’ve said that “Fold Me” is inspired by the idea of meeting alternate versions of oneself in different dimensions.
Klock: Yes, it came from my mother asking what an interaction with another version of myself might be like. I asked each dancer who they might be in a different dimension. I asked some very specific questions and we built character sketches. From there, I did the movement design. Though I have specific ideas for myself, I hope people come fresh and unaware and see how it strikes them.
Could you tell me about the soundscape for “Fold Me”?
Klock: I always design my own soundscape. I take music and deconstruct and reconstruct it into one long track. For this I used music from “The Revenant” soundtrack, sounds of rain that I remixed to form a rhythmic pattern, a dramatic strings piece by Anne Müller. All epic and large scale.
“III.Third” is part of a trilogy. Is there a plan to perform them all in Chicago at some point?
Butler: I hope so. I made all three in tandem, so I decided why not make them all about self? Right now we’re in a state of turmoil, and I don’t know if this is because I’m hyperaware of how I look when I step outside in the midst of the Me Too movement and the Black Lives Matter movement and immigrant rights. What can I do with my art instead of it just being an aesthetic thing and create activist work?
“First” is about gender, commissioned and performed at Loyola. “Second” is about race and premieres the same weekend at my alma mater, SUNY Purchase. “Third” is about customs and culture. I devised them as separate but equal. There’s shared material in all three.
How much did the dancers contribute to the creative process?
Butler: It’s a true collaboration. If someone had a feature, I would have them inject their voice in the phrase. One dancer is from Nicaragua, used a small gesture from Nicaraguan culture, pointing with the chin to indicate direction, that was implemented in her phrase. It’s not just about me navigating who I am and my identity but a mirrored image of the dancers, so it’s readily available to them and there’s new things to discover. And hopefully for the audience to find a glimmer of themselves in it. (Sharon Hoyer)
At the Harris Theater, 205 East Randolph, (312)635-3799. December 6, 8-9, Thursday at 7:30pm, Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 3pm. $25-$110. Tickets at hubbardstreetdance.com.
Related Stories
Reaching for the Light: A Review of Hubbard Street Dance Fall Series The collaboration between Movement Art Is, Emma Portner and Third Coast Percussion is potent, urgent and highly topical.- Kinetic Signature: A Preview of Hubbard Street Dance at the Auditorium Theatre Hubbard Street Dance's fortieth anniversary season and the Auditorium Theatre's "Made in Chicago" series intersect with a special program dedicated to Hubbard Street's first and only resident choreographer, Alejandro Cerrudo.
- What Could Be Better? Glenn Edgerton Discusses the Fortieth Anniversary Season of Hubbard Street Dance The Fall Series will transport audiences backstage and behind the scenes at the Harris Theater.
- A Present-Tense Art Form: Brian Brooks Returns to Hubbard Street Dance New York-based Brian Brooks writes a coda to his Harris Theater residency with a revisioning of his chaotic and complex "Terrain."
- Gentle, Awkward, Human: A Review of Hubbard Street Dance's Space, In Perspective at the Harris Theater ...the company visibly honed in on choreography that ranges from small—an almost imperceptibly slow descent by dancer Rena Butler from standing to sitting in a chair—to massive, with the combined Hubbard Street professional, Hubbard Street II companies and fifteen additional dancers from their professional training program creating a emotionally powerful moving tableau of humanity that evoked the march of our…
- Mycelium as Metaphor: A Preview of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s “Season 41 Fall Series” at the Harris Hubbard Street's Fall Series is a composite of interwoven movement styles from across the expansive mycelial web that is contemporary dance.
