I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who felt surprise and delight — and maybe a tinge of skepticism — when Hubbard Street Dance Chicago announced they were adding Bob Fosse to their repertoire. Since artistic director Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell arrived in 2021, she’s sent strong signals about shaking things up with her 47-year-old contemporary dance company, which has always been extraordinary but had perhaps gotten a little stuck in a routine aesthetic. But Fosse?
A trio of works collectively titled “Sweet Gwen Suite” is just one of an embarrassment of riches on view at the Steppenwolf Theatre through Nov. 24, part of Hubbard Street’s fall opener alongside pieces by Kyle Abraham, Lar Lubovitch and resident choreographer Aszure Barton.
“Sweet Gwen Suite” combines three vignettes originally created by Fosse and his muse, Gwen Verdon, for television. “Mexican Shuffle” and “Cool Hand Luke” appeared in 1968 on the “Bob Hope Special.” A year later, the rousing “Mexican Breakfast” premiered on the “Ed Sullivan Show.” It’s not the first time Chicago audiences have seen these little morsels, each not more than a handful of minutes long. Another of Fosse’s leading ladies, Ann Reinking, staged them on Thodos Dance Chicago in 2009. And if you’ve seen Beyonce’s video for “Single Ladies,” you’ve definitely seen “Mexican Breakfast.”
It’s also not the first time Fosse has been set on Hubbard Street. In 1991, Verdon staged “Percussion Four,” an addition to Hubbard Street’s repertoire which Tribune critic Richard Christiansen described as “particularly fitting” for the company directed by Lou Conte (and for which Fisher-Harrell was then a fledgling professional dancer).
“Particularly fitting” is how I’d also describe “Sweet Gwen Suite” for Hubbard Street in 2024 — because nothing should surprise us anymore with this extraordinary crop of genre-defying dancers. Thus, the Verdon Fosse Legacy, a vault for Fosse’s work led by his and Verdon’s daughter, Nicole Fosse, selected Hubbard Street as the first dance company trusted its safekeeping (thanks to staging by Bob Fosse’s former assistant Linda Haberman, who directed the Radio City Rockettes for nearly a decade.
The suite opens with Cyrie Topete, in Verdon’s role, flanked by two tall drinks of water, Dominick Brown and Aaron Choate. They’re in silhouette, smoking cigarettes, hats tipped just right, shimmery charro suits tightly fitted to every curve so the audience can glimpse each snap of the finger, tilt of the chin and booty bump — all things that make Fosse’s work so iconic. (Alexandria Best, Elliot Hammans and Andrew Murdock are an alternate cast on Saturday and twice next weekend.)
“Sweet Gwen Suite” is not the very best of what Bob Fosse left us, but it serves as a primer on his technique and signals Hubbard Street’s mastery of everything it has attempted lately. Learning the style — which is more about what happens between the steps than the steps themselves — also seemed to inject revisited works on the rest of the program with freshness and verve.
We saw it in a sweet little duet, “Prelude to a Kiss,” by Lubovitch, performed Friday by Hammans and Alexandria Best (alternating with Morgan Clune and Jack Henderson), a jazz-infused flirtation that glides across the stage like ice skating. And surely, the Fosse effect is evident in dancer Shota Miyoshi’s singular interpretation of Abraham’s “Show Pony,” an exquisite stunner throwing all things exhibitionist into a magical melting pot and dressing it up in a shimmery gold unitard. There’s jazz, a bit of ballet — dressage, maybe? — plus a bit of J-setting and vogue. Think Madonna with a side of Billy Porter and a skosh of eyebrow-raising mordacity, all put to “Hatshepsut,” a score by Gary, Indiana-based composer Jlin that, like “Show Pony” itself, is a delectable gumbo of electronic music and drumline.
The night opens and closes with two works by Barton, offering up a kind of yin and yang with “return to patience” and “Busk.” The former is a palette cleaner to the darker, more sardonic “Busk.” And now that we’ve seen them together, they subversively share a whole lot in common — with “Busk” like an elongated, distorted shadow of “return” cast onto the sidewalk.
A comparison between Barton and Fosse sounds ridiculous at first. But these two iconoclasts both demand precision, specificity and the appearance of effortlessness doing something that, in reality, is unconscionably hard. Take “return to patience,” which puts 19 dancers on stage together (including a crop of five pre-professionals from the company’s summer intensive). They’re dressed in white, surrounded by Nicole Pearce’s white-on-white box, moving methodically (but not impersonally) through passages on a single leg, in unison. It’s stripped down and vulnerable. It’s also a salve. And a requiem.
In her curtain speech, Fisher-Harrell noted the recent death of Judith Jamison, the dance titan who led Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from 1989 to 2011 following the death of her mentor. After Hubbard Street, Fisher-Harrell spent the bulk of her career on stage working under Jamison; she has cited her and Hubbard Street founder Lou Conte as mentors shepherding her journey as a first-time artistic director. Her palpable grief surfaced not just the loss of this inimitable legend, but a guiding star for the current generation of leaders. If Friday is any indication, Jamison is very much still with Fisher-Harrell in spirit — but she’s got this.
Review: Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s Fall Series (4 stars)
When: Through 2:30 p.m. Nov. 24
Where: Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St.
Running Time: 2 hours with 2 intermissions
Tickets: All performances are sold out; $30 stand-by tickets are available at the box office one hour before each show on a first come, first-served basis; more at www.hubbardstreetdance.com
