Linda Haberman of The Verdon Fosse Legacy with Hubbard Street dancers Elliot Hammans, Morgan Clune and Shota Miyoshi/Photo: Michelle Reid

A dance company’s repertory is a library of sorts—a repository of dances by many, or sometimes one, choreographer collected, preserved and made available for public view. Dancers trained to perform these works keep them alive, remounting them periodically over the course of years. But choreographers working outside the concert dance setting, say on Broadway, have no such institutions to archive and preserve their work. As Nicole Fosse, daughter of legends Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon puts it, the show “opens and closes” and that’s it. Fosse, founder and artistic director of the Verdon Fosse Legacy, has been looking for a concert dance company to house her parents’ iconic work. Bob Fosse is perhaps the best-known choreographer on this continent—if not in name, then certainly aesthetics: slinky black costumes, bowler hats on tilted heads, slanting torsos and arms framing thrusting hips. If Michael Jackson comes to mind (or Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” video), there’s a reason for that: Fosse’s work continues to be massively influential in pop and high culture decades after his passing. Verdon, his wife and muse, was an important collaborator in his creative process. Their instantly identifiable style, packed with both precision and theatrical expressiveness, is unusual material for contemporary companies. The dances needed to be entrusted to a company that is versatile and unafraid to adopt Broadway vocabulary.

Lucky for us in Chicago, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago is that company. In its upcoming fall series running November 15-24 at Steppenwolf’s Downstairs Theater, Hubbard Street will premiere “Sweet Gwen Suite,” a trio of short pieces Fosse originally created for television and the Verdon Fosse Legacy adapted for stage. The dance will remain in Hubbard Street’s repertory, making them the first company to be granted the privilege.

Fosse says she had wanted to find a concert dance home for her parents’ work for some time, a desire that heightened during the pandemic. “I realized his work is only seen on Broadway or in tiny little boxes on YouTube,” she says. Fosse engaged Linda Haberman, who worked extensively with Bob Fosse, to reconstruct and adapt three pieces created in the sixties for Bob Hope specials and the Ed Sullivan Show into a single stage piece. “Sweet Gwen Suite” premiered at New York City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival in 2021. “It was performed three times and then it was over,” Fosse says. “I thought, ‘this needs to live someplace.’ I had been doing fieldwork with Allen Fields, who had a brief career with Hubbard Street. He called Linda-Denise [Fisher-Harrell]. It all made sense for it to go to Hubbard Street.”

Fisher-Harrell, artistic director of Hubbard Street, was a dancer with the company when Gwen Verdon came to set a piece entitled “Percussion 4,” some thirty years ago. Fosse says her mother adored Hubbard Street and the feeling was mutual. “We were a jazz company,” Fisher-Harrell says. “Bob Fosse was one of [Hubbard Street founder] Lou Conte’s idols. He loved his work. Lou was friends with Gwen Verdon. Nicole was looking for a company that would do Bob and Gwen’s work with the integrity it deserves.”

As this is being written, Haberman is at the Hubbard Street studio, training the dancers in Fosse’s crisp, distinctive vocabulary. “Sweet Gwen Suite” is a set of trios and, according to Nicole Fosse, a “tour de force” for the center dancer, originally danced by Verdon. “They don’t stop for eleven minutes, and they go from comedy to romance to outlandish athleticism,” she says.

When I ask Fisher-Harrell about casting, she says it was yet to be determined. “This is a problem all choreographers have when they come in. They say, ‘can we have everyone?’ It’s so difficult to say out of everyone—female presenting folks, male presenting folks—you can do anything.

“No matter who you come to see, it’s gonna be delicious,” she adds.

“Sweet Gwen Suite” will appear alongside Kyle Abraham’s solo “Show Pony” (another tour de force), a duet by Lar Lubovitch, and two by resident artist Aszure Barton that bookend the show—a program designed to showcase the Hubbard Street dancers’ remarkable versatility.

The fall program marks another first: Hubbard Street’s debut at Steppenwolf Theatre—a larger house than the Museum of Contemporary Art, where the company has held their fall series for the last several years. Fisher-Harrell says the idea came from Hubbard Street executive director David McDermott, who was looking to reach new audiences. Fisher-Harrell says she hopes the venue courts new Hubbard Street fans. The inclusion of a Fosse piece may just help woo audiences more accustomed to narrative theatrical work.

Nicole Fosse says she believes Hubbard Street embracing Broadway style is “invigorating to the dance world.”

“I love having a piece of my father and mother’s out there in the world as its own little Fabergé egg,” she says. “I love this idea of these little bubbles of magic we can begin to present to a new and different audience, a non-Broadway audience.”

I couldn’t help mentioning the “Single Ladies” video in passing, which lifts pretty much move-for-move Bob Fosse’s 1969 “Mexican Breakfast,” the closer of “Sweet Gwen Suite.” Nicole Fosse pauses for a beat then says, “There’s a moment in the third movement. It’s an acknowledgment of Beyoncé, with a smirk on their faces. I don’t know who’s going to pick up on it, but it’s definitely there: ‘We know what you did.’”

I ask Fisher-Harrell if more Verdon/Fosse pieces will find their way into the Hubbard Street repertory. Without going into specifics, she enthusiastically suggests it is likely. “It’s an honor that Nicole agreed to have us house her parents’ work. How precious is that, to have her trust us? If she wants to go deeper with us, oh my god, do you think I’m going to say no to that?”

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 1650 North Halsted. November 15-24, Thursdays-Saturdays at 7pm; Sundays at 2:30pm. Tickets are $20-$95, available at hubbardstreetdance.com.