Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Summer Series: Live review

Aszure Barton has done her job.

Dance exists outside the realm of language and, sure enough, it’s very difficult to put Untouched into words.

But first, the substitute: Jorma Elo’s Bitter Suite opens Hubbard Street’s summer bill instead of Deep Down Dos, which was delayed three days ago due to music rights issues. Its life depends on its score, from Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and two Monteverdi operas, without offering much illumination in return. It’s the kind of piece that rarely looks good on opening night because it’s phenomenally dense, engraved and filigreed in every dimension, full of details hard to show properly when new. Works like this take a few performances to settle inside a body and, sure enough, it’s far better now that the dancers have had time to separate figure from ground, and noun from adjective.

Lord knows Elo hasn’t given them any help, although Bitter Suite is much improved by the choreographer’s adjustments. Its best moments—Kevin Shannon looking upward and pawing at his neck, antsy group necktie adjustment with thumb-and-forefinger guns—don’t last any longer than any others (between roughly one and two thirds of a second). The cast finds ways of making Bitter Suite its own by relaxing inside the rush of imagery and having fun deciding what to underline. Penny Saunders merrily pecks at a typewriter on Jason Hortin’s back. Kellie Epperheimer repeatedly pokes out Shannon’s left eye. Air quotes appear around body parts. Laura Halm and Benjamin Wardell discover their duet’s alternate ending. Joy in these tiny choices is, though, the beginning and end of what the punch-list roles allow them to explore. I found my focus drifting toward those who were playing most loosely by its rules for, while Epperheimer, Halm, Shannon and Christian Broomhall perfectly executed its challenges, in doing so they show what Elo leaves unaccounted for.

Toru Shimazaki’s Bardo, back again, continues to be plagued by a gap between the plan and the result. Although I seem to recall it opening a show once, it was obviously built to be a closer. Set to Dead Can Dance songs, Bardo runs, falls, leaps, kicks and rolls around on the ground trying harder to be enormous than anything in particular. A few, Alejandro Cerrudo especially, are gorgeous in it. It does look fun to dance. Ryan O’Gara’s lighting is superb, exploding and focusing space, and providing Bardo with most of its arc.

In between the two is Barton’s Untouched, a world premiere. Like Bardo, it’s for twelve dancers and moodily-lit. Otherwise, it’s from the other side of the universe. Its decor (uncredited) is lit (by Nicole Pearce) such that it appears we are looking onto a stage through its back wall. A heavy red curtain hangs, just partly opened, upstage. The floor is lit by shafts of light from beyond this curtain. There’s the sense another house, another audience, is back there sitting quietly, with only a small window onto the action we see clearly, thus, the work is our secret. On top of that atmosphere, Barton builds a world of bodily language suggesting rapidly-shifting power structures lightly dusted with the folkloric. The ambiguity of the work’s title echoes in your head as you watch: They’re immaculate. They’re virgin. They’re alone, above, below. They’ve yet to be experienced. It’s somehow about dancers. It features beautiful ideas about how and when dancers can enter and exit the stage. Its closing duet is spellbinding.

I can’t describe it.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s Summer Series continues through Sunday at the Harris.