Hubbard Street Dance: between too little and too much

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, long recognized as one of the preeminent repertory contemporary dance companies in the US, seems to have made a recent decision to support a select few choreographers — one of which is choreographer-in-residence Alejandro Cerrudo —and to programme their works extensively. Program A, for example, recently at the Joyce Theater, includes two Cerrudo pieces (as well as a work by Robyn Mineko Williams, another Hubbard Street alum). Unfortunately, this made for a rather one-note program. (One-piece program, perhaps?) Whether it’s because Cerrudo and Williams know the Hubbard Street dancers too well or because their choreographic styles are too similar, I am not sure.

Both of Cerrudo’s pieces, Second to Last and Cloudless, felt nearly indistinguishable from each other. The first was a silky, lyrical, slinky work for several couples in what felt like various stages of romance. The latter, a duet for the equally sublime Jacqueline Burnett and Ana Lopez, was slightly more interesting, with its mirrored limbs and vague feelings of confrontation. The choice of music for either did little to assuage the comfortably glassy eyes I imagined I must have had while viewing: Arvo Part feels a little overused in dance these days, and Nils Frahm’s piano piece for the duet did little in the way of dynamics.

William’s trio, meanwhile, for two men and a woman (again, the highly capable Ms. Burnett) seemed too dependent on some convoluted plot—two men who fight for possessions of the woman — that I couldn’t follow.

Aside from these Hubbard Street bred choreographers, there was Crystal Pite and Gustavo Ramirez Sansano. Pite’s A Picture of You Falling wasn’t fresh—a lone man essentially dances what a recorded, clipped female voice dictates—but Jason Hortin’s ability to be wonderfully elastic and yet staccato at the same time lent it purpose, at least.

And Mr. Sansano’s piece, I Am Mister B, was certainly the attention-getter of the evening. Part homage to Balanchine (and his Theme and Variations), part dance-theater (with Jesse Bechard striding downstage and, of all things, speaking to the audience as Balanchine), part mess (the night I attended, the music cut out for a second or two and bewilderment was easy to see onstage), part genius (endless canons, overly dense phrase work, miraculously many dancers onstage at the same time)...it was all too much to take in at once. Yet it was also the only piece I really found myself thinking about more once I left the theater. Mr. Sansano may have overdone it, but I suppose that’s considerably better, in this instance, than under-doing it.