As companies commission countless new dances tagged as “groundbreaking” for their mix of hip-hop, modern and ballet, one wonders when they cease to break ground at all. They’re all starting to collapse into one another: set to the same droning synth strings and house beats, in smoky lighting that confines dancers to tight geometries.
James Gregg’s Within the Frame for Hubbard Street Dance shipped dancers in and out of a quadrangle of light, ripples surging through their bodies, their faces impassive. It began with a dancer prone on the ground slowly pivoting as another stood on their back, as if surfing a wave. Then the standing dancer got off as if at a bus stop. While a louche air of confrontation permeated the proceedings, these stellar dancers were too busy clutching an errant foot or subduing a wavering knee, to create genuine tension. It was a fine exhibition of style but went on far longer than it needed to.
On the same program at the Joyce, Matthew Rushing’s Beauty Chasers swept us into a compelling journey. The dancers, practically nude, in briefs and crop tops, were initially trapped in shadowy cones of light, twisting, shuddering, slapping their chests, revolving in precarious balances, sinking to the ground. Cyrie Topete unfurled her arms with gorgeous fluidity, traveling backward on shimmering feet before pitching into a layout. The statuesque Bianca Melidor whirled with arms and upper body carving the air at thrilling angles. Shota Miyoshi was a coiled dynamo, perpetually about to detonate.
The score moved from gentle piano and industrial rumblings to jazz, African drumming and Alice Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders’ mystical confluence of harp, sax, bass, percussion and tanpura, the dancers weaving together and apart with the inevitability of glacial meltwater carving elaborate tunnels that emerges in braided rivers. Along the way they acquired more clothing: pants, a skirted layer and beads strung around their chests. A painted stripe down their faces sharpened as the stage glowed more brightly, the backdrop awash in a deep sea blue, then a fiery red. Elbows jutted, hips rolled, feet drove downward then snapped up in jagged jumps like lightning strikes as West African rhythms took hold. Allusions surfaced: echoes of Audre Lord’s 125th Street and Abomey, linking Harlem with the pre-colonial Dahomey kingdom, modern America with ancestral roots.
Bob Fosse’s Percussion IV was an exhibition of style that knew when to exit and made every moment count. Soloist Aaron Choate flung their arms forward in a dramatic contraction, as if firing a cannon, then unleashed a battery of hip thrusts, shoulder shimmies, split leaps, whipping turns and floor slides. A fusillade of drums, whistles and sirens orchestrated by Gordon Lowry Harrell signaled a rhythmic emergency, extinguished by the dancer’s howl as they dropped to one knee, delirious, spent.
Other dancers, including Bianca Melidor, will tackle Percussion IV as Hubbard Street moves beyond the piece’s traditionally male casting. It’s an exciting addition to the repertory, underscored by a new partnership with the Verdon Fosse Legacy – a natural fit, and a win for Fosse's hometown of Chicago.
Individuality thrives at Hubbard Street today, making for an interesting collision with anonymity in Aszure Barton’s Blue Soup. At the heart of this madcap work is an ensemble clad in identical, comically oversized, fluorescent-blue drape suits – the title and the outrageous color straight out of Dr Seuss. But first, Aaron Choate – having quite a night – appeared in a blue jacket and skimpy leotard, heels and a mass of blonde curls that got more unruly by the minute, strutting, hurling themself about and lip-synching to the 1950s doo-wop hit Sh-Boom. “Life could be a dream,” sang The Chords, hedging, and Choate’s cheery showbiz façade eventually cracked.
To an eclectic soundtrack – the opening theme from Mulholland Drive, Serge Gainsbourg’s Comic Strip, Paul Simon’s barbed Pigs, Sheep and Wolves, Randy Newman’s peppy I’m Different, and the otherworldly vocal stylings of Faraualla – intermittent solos and duets proved less original than the virtuosic, sharp-elbowed, whiz-bang heroics of the ensemble, their backs mostly to us, in an aesthetic that nodded to 1960s comic-book action and Ohad Naharin’s Gaga. Light and dark interweave: Maya Angelou – “Sounds like pearls roll off your tongue” and the ominous “We die, welcoming Bluebeards” set against nonsense syllables chanted elsewhere. Shota Miyoshi – another dancer having a big night – made pearls of the more tiresome passages, pushing isolations to extremes. A chilling turn came with a sudden downshift as the ensemble moved slowly into headstands like a phalanx of rockets readying for launch (with pointed, stockinged feet as payload); back on their feet they slowly, as if unwilling, raised a hand and tilted off vertical. This landed on Randy Newman’s sudden snarl: “Ain’t gonna play no boss man’s game.”
