Jeffrey Kazin and David Parker in “Schlemiezel,” which will be performed as part of “Time Will Tell” at Links Hall/Photo: Julie Lemberger

Longtime collaborators Sara Hook and David Parker have full schedules in separate cities. Hook is the head of the dance department at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and Parker runs his rhythmic contemporary company The Bang Group out of New York. But the two still find time to creatively connect, and bring an evening of short dances, new and old, to Links Hall. They share the bill with Roxane D’Orleans Juste, a thirty-plus year veteran of José Limón’s revered dance company. We spoke with Hook and Parker about their enduring creative partnership and what we’ll see at Links this weekend.

The two of you have known each other for some time. Can you tell me briefly how you met and started collaborating?

Hook: We met in the eighties and I was studying and David was teaching at the same Pilates studio in New York. But we didn’t meet again until we took a workshop from the famous composition teacher Bessie Schonberg, after whom the Bessie awards are named, and we were very interested in each other’s work and how we talked about each other’s work. We had a mutual friend who commissioned our first duet. We’re adapting excerpts of that duet for the Chicago show—not performed by us, but by younger dancers.

You had said this show is greater than the sum of its parts. How did you select the pieces for the show?

Parker: Some of it was serendipity and some was intentional. We knew we wanted to revive the first piece we had made together, which was performed in 1995. We wanted to mingle our artistic ideas and also our dancers. The foundation is this piece called “Housebroken.” We made it when we were young-ish and it’s about an elderly couple. We have since reset it a couple of times. This time we set it on people we’ve worked with for some time.

Hook: It’s a very physical piece—intricate, demanding. Interesting, complex partnering, with a hat.

Parker: A hat that stands in for our shared memories, or history, or children.

How do you feel about the piece now that you’ve reached the age of the characters you’d imagined when you were young?

Parker: I don’t believe we imagined we’d still be doing a) what we’re doing and b) with each other. It’s a gift we can continue to engage with each other.

Are there other pieces on the program you’d like to speak about?

Parker: I’m doing something quite new and something from about twenty years ago. The new piece is for myself and my dance partner Jeffrey Kazin. It’s for two men of a certain age who are also in a long-term relationship, defined by Velcro suits. We wear head-to-toe Velcro suits in green plaid that allow us to be in the inescapable situation of having to stick together or rip apart. We do this while we execute a vaudeville act which requires us to tap dance and eventually integrate the ripping sounds of the Velcro.

Hook: It’s quite virtuosic and hilarious.

Parker: The older piece is a duet for two men called “Friends of Dorothy,” which Jeff and I also did when we were quite young. There’s a certain theme of trans-generational legacy among the living. “Friends of Dorothy” was slang among gay men in the 1960s. They’d say, “Is he a friend of Dorothy’s?” referring to Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz.” It’s a piece I made when I wasn’t so far from my own discovery of myself being gay. It’s about two men who go through what could be interpreted as youthful horsing around to full-blown romance.

Hook: And I’m doing a premiere of a male duet called “Dicks.” It’s a play on the old reader series “Dick and Jane.” David and I learned to read on them. I made a series of pieces looking at gender and dance and training cultures. This looks at the playfulness and serious intentionality of burgeoning sexuality that is being negotiated, disguised and celebrated at the same time.

And would you like to speak a little about Roxane’s piece?

Hook: Roxane is an iconic performer—Bessie-winning, three decades with the José Limón company—so anytime she’s on stage you want to be there. This piece is a very ironic look at a Black dancer’s life. I think she elegantly, in her own way, is trying to look at categories: Why do we call something “Black dance” as opposed to “experimental dance” or “postmodern dance?” She is steeped in asking questions about race and identity and artificial divides between genres of dance. Which is something she has in common with David, who has always looked at using any kind of information or ideas from all corners of the dance field to create drama.

Does the title have anything to do with the maturity of the collaborators on this show?

Hook: [laughs] Probably.

Parker: I think it was Sara who suggested we use “time” in the title, because my work is driven by rhythms you can hear and rhythms you can see in relationships.

Hook: I was attracted to it because it’s a play on what we don’t and don’t know. David and I share a suspicion of trends. “Time will tell” indicates, “who knows what is classic? Who knows what will last?”

Parker: That sense of sustained creativity over time. You don’t want to look for your alignment with extremely temporary trends, but for the overall long-term sustained vision. At this point in our lives, we gratefully can do that.

“Time Will Tell” at Links Hall, 3111 North Western. Friday & Saturday, March 14 & 15 at 7pm. Tickets are $20, or $10 for seniors. Tickets and info at linkshall.org.