By Kyle MacMillan
When Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell took over as artistic director of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in March 2021, the company was confronting some tough challenges. Less than a year earlier, the internationally known contemporary dancers had closed their longtime home, the Lou Conte Dance Studio, 1147 W. Jackson, which left them temporarily renting space from a fellow troupe. In a letter to the company’s “friends and patrons” announcing that news, executive director David McDermott raised questions about its very survival as he outlined cutbacks and estimated that the company’s losses from the COVID-19 pandemic could be “well in excess” of $1 million.
But Hubbard has not only overcome that dark time but also regained much if not most of its former artistic vigor. As evidence, the company can point to its summer touring, which included an August 10–14 return to the Jacob’s Pillow Festival in Becket, MA, one of this country’s most important such summer dance events, as well as an August 28 appearance in New York’s Central Park under the auspices of the SummerStage series. In addition, it is returning September 16 to the Ravinia Festival, where it performed semi-regularly in the 1980s and 1990s but has not appeared since 2006. “It was always very successful to play Ravinia,” Fisher-Harrell said. “To me, it just made sense to go back.”
Hubbard Street Dancer Andrew Murdock and company performing BUSK by Aszure Barton (photo: Michelle Reid)
As far back as at least 1947, ballet companies—full troupes and ensembles of star dancers—and modern dance ensembles have visited Ravinia consistently, including those led by such luminaries as George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, Laura Dean, Martha Graham, Bill T. Jones, Pearl Lang, Mark Morris, Paul Taylor, and Twyla Tharp. Jeffrey Haydon, who took over in September 2020 as Ravinia’s president and chief executive officer, has made continuing that rich dance heritage one of his priorities.
“The first thing for anything at Ravinia is that is has be centered and inspired by music,” Haydon said. “And what I love about the combination of dance and music is that we’re such a visual society, and dance gives us an opportunity to see the music and see an interpretation of music that you don’t get in just a concert performance.”
Hubbard Street Dancers in This, That, and the Third by Rena Butler (photo: Todd Rosenberg)
When Haydon worked for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for three years more than two decades ago, friends invited his wife and him to a Hubbard Street performance, and it was one of his first experiences with modern dance. “I was smitten by it,” he said, “so when I came to Ravinia, I knew that I wanted to reach back out and bring Hubbard Street up as a cultural entity here.”
Founded in 1977 by Lou Conte, Hubbard Street started out as a primarily a jazz company but later expanded into modern dance and ballet. Subsequent artistic directors have continued to widen its stylistic scope, with the company presenting some 200 different works during its more than four-decade history. Since her arrival, Fisher-Harrell, the first woman and first person of color to serve as the company’s artistic director, has put inclusion and diversity front and center both in her choice of dancers for the company as well as the kinds of stories the company brings to the stage. The company recently hired six dancers, including Morgan Clune, a native of Barrington, IL, who will join eight veteran members for the Ravinia performance and its own 2022/23 subscription season—a celebration of its 45th anniversary that includes five world premieres.
Hubbard Street Dancer Michele Dooley (photo: Frank Ishman)
In January, the company announced that it had shifted its studios to a 13,000-square-foot space on the fourth floor of Water Tower Place, 835 Michigan Ave. The Magnificent Mile mall has suffered a string of vacancies in recent years, including the much-publicized loss last year of its anchor tenant, Macy’s, a departure that alone left more than 300,000 square feet empty. The company saw the move as a way to both obtain much-needed new quarters and creatively repurpose what had been retail space. “What better place than the Water Tower, which has this huge open space, which we converted into two studios,” Fisher-Harrell said. In addition, there is room for wardrobe and production shops and administrative offices. “So, it just worked out,” she said. “The timing is perfect.”
The artistic director praised the downtown location of the studios, which are near abundant public transportation. The goal is to begin offering community classes there as soon as possible. “We always wanted to keep the studio accessible and in a place that’s central in Chicago so people can get to us,” she said. This past summer, Hubbard Street hosted its first Summer Intensive since the COVID-19 shutdown, dividing sessions between the new studios and spaces at Roosevelt University and Columbia College. The rigorous training program is geared to dance students ages 13–17 and preprofessional dancers ages 18–24 who are chosen for participation by audition.
Fisher-Harrell has fond memories of dancing at Ravinia when she was a Hubbard Street member in 1989–92, and she was surprised, when she returned as artistic director, that the company had not visited the summer venue in more than 15 years. “It didn’t make any sense,” she said. Randy White, a Hubbard Street life director who is also a member of Ravinia’s board, invited her to a concert last year at the festival featuring actress and singer Cynthia Erivo, and the experience made Fisher-Harrell even more eager to bring the company back. “It was so nostalgic,” she said. “I said, ‘Why are we not here? We need to be here.’ ” A little later, Ravinia representatives came to one of Hubbard Street’s first public performances after the COVID-19 shutdown at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Millennium Park, and they obviously liked what they saw.
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago performing As the Wind Blows by Amy Hall Garner (photo: Michelle Reid)
For its return to Ravinia, the company presents a multifaceted program that highlights both the company’s diversified repertoire and versatile dancers. The lineup opens with As the Wind Blows by New York–based choreographer Amy Hall Garner, a piece that Hubbard Street debuted in January. “Amy Hall Garner’s style?” Fisher-Harrell said. “You can’t even it peg it. You can’t say that it’s jazz, modern, ballet, or Broadway. She kind of dances across all those idioms. It kind of harks back to the Hubbard Street that I was a part of in the late ’80s and early ’90s, in that it welcomes the audience with a little bit of razzle-dazzle.”
Next comes Little Rhapsodies by Lar Lubovitch, who founded his own acclaimed company in 1968 and has choreographed works for such other leading troupes as the Paris Opera Ballet and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Hubbard Street has a history of performing his works, but this male trio was only recently added to the company’s repertory. Lubovitch’s company premiered it in 2007 at New York University to stellar reviews. “I just think that he is just such an important American choreographer,” Fisher-Harrell said, “and for the dancers to actually perform his work is very special. When I did Lar’s pieces, I was always exhausted at the end, completely devoid of any energy, but I felt great. You felt you had used your entire body. You didn’t feel like you were hurting, but you felt completely fulfilled as an artist, that you had used your complete instrument.”
Little Rhapsodies is set to Robert Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes, a set of variations for solo piano that was first published in 1837. It will be performed onstage by Gregory Smith, a frequent accompanist who worked with the Seattle Opera in 2013–18 and has collaborated with several dance organizations in Chicago, including Ballet Chicago, Hyde Park School of Dance, and Joffrey Academy of Dance. Rounding out the Ravinia program is Spenser Theberge’s Ne Me Quitte Pas and Aszure Barton’s BUSK.
As Hubbard Street returns to touring, including its September 16 run-out to Ravinia, and prepares for its 2022/23 Chicago season, Fisher-Harrell is excited to show off the latest iteration of this well-established Chicago dance institution. She hopes it will appeal to the company’s past audiences and attract new fans. “The company is fresh,” she said. “It’s new. What is synonymous and what has been synonymous [with Hubbard Street] through the 45 years is dance excellence. We’re still the same in that measure, but we’re also broadening the works that we’re bringing into the company, broadening the different voices.” ●
Kyle MacMillan served as classical music critic for the Denver Post from 2000 through 2011. He currently freelances in Chicago, writing for such publications and websites as the Chicago Sun-Times, Early Music America, Opera News, and Classical Voice of North America.