HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO
This season at the Civic, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago revives Nine Sinatra Songs, the fifth work acquired for its Tharp Project. And these 14 dancers do remarkably well, especially in the duets with a touch of humor or aggression. This is one of the straightest Tharp dances I’ve seen–it’s even literally straight, the dancers more upright and the limbs more spiky than in earlier works. But it does have its cynical, teasing side. In “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)” the dancers are drunks: Daniela Panessa clambers onto Joseph Mooradian’s back or slips through his arms into a soggy heap; they give each other playful little shoves back and forth in a bit of gleeful drunken flirtation.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
If I focus on the Tharp works–there are some 13 dances by other choreographers scheduled for these performances–it’s because they stand head and shoulders above what almost any other choreographer today is doing. Chicagoans are extremely lucky to have a champion hometown team performing the works of a genuine leading light. It’s almost unfair to someone like Margo Sappington to have her new work, The Forging Ground, premiered on the same program as Baker’s Dozen and Nine Sinatra Songs.
