Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s Israel bill

Things weren’t looking good for top-shelf professional dancers a decade ago. It was a time of more is more, when choreographers saturated the market with 20-minute works that contained as many moves as a three-act ballet.

Many of these works were influenced by William Forsythe’s Improvisation Technologies program, which maps movement based on how the body occupies space. In the early aughties, overzealous adopters and their frenetic imitations pushed audience members, choreography and dancers to the limit.

Two highly anticipated premieres at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago illustrate how dance can move away from that edge by mapping energy within the body itself.