WINTER SERIES

This winter, four inventive artists will awaken your spirit with evocative works exploring themes of acceptance, self-reckoning, and the complexities of desire.

Crystal Pite brings the U.S. company premiere of Solo Echo to Hubbard Street, alongside a world premiere by Penny Saunders, and A Glimpse Inside a Shared Story: new work for Hubbard Street 2 by 2015 International Commissioning Project choreographer Yin Yue. Waxing Moon by Robyn Mineko Williams, called “breathtaking” by the Chicago Tribune, completes this compelling program.

PROGRAM

• Solo Echo by Crystal Pite

  The Winter Series features the Hubbard Street premiere and first production by a U.S. dance company of Solo Echo by Crystal Pite, originally created for Nederlands Dans Theater in 2012. Inspired by poet Mark Strand’s Lines for Winter and set to excerpts from two sonatas for cello and piano by Johannes Brahms, opuses 38 and 99, Solo Echo is exemplary of the fluidity with which Pite’s choreography shifts between dance and theater, using classical and contemporary techniques. “Solo Echo presents a man reckoning with himself at the end of his life,” explains Pite. “The character is echoed — copied, reiterated, by seven different dancers. He is portrayed through both male and female bodies, and through various physiques and strengths. Each performer is a distinct and nuanced version of the character, and the connections between them evoke a man coming to terms with himself.”

   

  Waxing Moon by Robyn Mineko Williams

  A compelling trio by Princess Grace Award–winning artist Robyn Mineko Williams, Waxing Moon makes its debut at the Harris Theater. “Williams, who danced with Hubbard Street for 12 years, has grown into a choreographer of great sophistication and power,” writes Hedy Weiss of the Chicago Sun-Times, while Miriam Finder of Gapers Block notes that “this is the type of dancing viewers get lost in,” and Laura Molzahn of the Chicago Tribune calls Waxing Moon “breathtaking.” For her fourth original work for Hubbard Street, Williams reunited with New York–based lighting designer Burke Brown (Cloudless, Fluence), acclaimed fashion designer Hogan McLaughlin, and Chicago composers Robert F. Haynes and Tony Lazzara. 

   

  Out of Keeping by Penny Saunders

  Hubbard Street Dancer Penny Saunders creates a world premiere for the Winter Series, with décor by lighting and visual designer Michael Mazzola, a two-time New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award winner, and longtime Bebe Miller Company collaborator. This new work follows Saunders’ previous creations for Hubbard Street (Adalea, 2013), Hubbard Street 2 (Bonobo, 2012), and numerous projects for Hubbard Street’s annual Inside/Out Choreographic Workshop. Its score features a wide-ranging collection of music including recordings by Icelandic artist Ólafur Arnalds, as well as from Silfra, the 2012 collaboration for violin and prepared piano between Grammy Award–winner Hilary Hahn and German composer Volker Bertelmann (Hauschka). A Hubbard Street dancer from 2004–13 who returned in August 2015, Saunders’ hiatus from the company “led to some interesting discoveries,” she explains, “about the fact that every place is always changing and moving forward, whether or not you are there. This new piece is, in part, my way of forging a dance within that truth.” Saunders has recently choreographed for the Nexus Project, Owen/Cox Dance Group, SFDanceworks, Whim W’Him, Grand Rapids Ballet, and Neos Dance Theatre as a choreographer in residence at the University of Akron. 

   

  A Glimpse Inside a Shared Story  by Yin Yue for Hubbard Street 2

  Hubbard Street’s outstanding ensemble of early-career artists joins its main company for the Winter Series, performing a new work by Chinese-American choreographer Yin Yue, created through the company’s 16th annual International Commissioning Project. Yue’s new work features a cast of five and fast-paced, athletic choreography set to music by Wolfgang Voigt (Gas), Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) and Michel Banabila, and The Advent and Jason Fernandes, with original costume designs by Rebecca M. Shouse and lighting by Julie E. Ballard. The main themes of Yin Yue’s choreographic work are emotional experience, conflicts, and relationships in all their complexity, as recognized in 2013 by Northwest Dance Project’s 5th Annual Pretty Creatives International Choreographic Competition, and by her selection as a finalist at “The A.W.A.R.D. Show! 2010” presented by The Joyce Theater Foundation in New York City. Yin Yue is also artistic director of Jiangxi Zhongshan Dance School, founded in 1996 and located in Nanchang in China’s Jiangxi province.