Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Dance roundup: HUBBARD STREET DANCE returns to The Joyce, MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP performs at BAM

• By drediman
• March 30, 2026
• No Comments

The past week saw the return of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago to The Joyce Theater, as well as Mark Morris Dance Group perform at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Here are my thoughts on these spring engagements by two of America’s most iconic contemporary dance companies.

HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO
The Joyce Theater
Through April 5

This spring, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago has returned to New York for a two-week residency at The Joyce (RECOMMENDED). It’s an interesting time at Hubbard Street, and its opening night program (the first of two bills) found the company contemplating its identity with three pieces that look back to where it’s been and where it’s heading. The evening opened with Gnawa, Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato’s 2005 work created for Hubbard Street. Now considered a company classic, the full company dance is set to North African-inspired music by Hassan Hakmoun and Adam Rudolph and represents the company’s long association with the European contemporary dance aesthetic. Having seen the piece numerous times over the years, Gnawa still mesmerizes with its rhythmic seduction, even if its stage pictures aren’t quite as striking as my first encounters with the piece. Harkening farther back in Hubbard Street’s history in recognition of the company’s jazz dance roots, the program continued with Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon’s Sweet Gwen Suite. Originally commissioned by Fall for Dance in 2021, the piece is a natural fit for the company. On Tuesday night, it was danced by Dominick Brown, Aaron Choate, and Cyrie Topete. The compact and athletic Topete, in particular (stylishly framed by the long limbed Brown and Choate), captured both the attitude and tension that characterize Fosse’s choreography and Verdon’s irrepressible personality and performance style. The program concluded in upbeat fashion with the company premiere of Aszure Barton’s signature 2002 Blue Soup, a sort of warped yet giddy commentary on American culture. Performed by the entire company, the work was a joyful and fitting closer, abundant in imagination and featuring elements of offbeat storytelling. In short, it hits Hubbard Street’s sweet spot — allowing the company to flex both character-based dancing and show-off the rigorous discipline of modern dance — and is a fitting encapsulation of the company’s identity at this current stage of its storied history.

MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Closed

Over the weekend, I was able to attend both of Mark Morris Dance Group’s programs at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (RECOMMENDED). The first of these was Morris’s latest full-length creation Moon, in essence a playful meditation on our continued enchantment and relationship with Earth’s neighboring celestial satellite. The piece features pajama-like costumes — calling to mind stylized astronaut space suits — by designer Isaac Mizrahi and wittily associative projections by Wendall K. Harrington. Set to an eclectic soundtrack comprised of compositions of György Ligeti (you may recognize the haunting piano score from Stanley Kubrick’s film Eyes Wide Shut), organ works by Marcel Dupré, classic pop songs, and the various languages of the Golden Record sent into space by NASA in 1977, the episodic dance exudes lightweight kitsch, in turn nostalgic and quirky as it all unfolds in just under an hour. As if to suggest the pull of gravitational forces on bodies in space, the work regularly returns to circular choreographic patterning, although Morris’s easygoing aesthetic at some points gets lost in the visual business of the production (e.g., those astronaut statuettes!). Occasionally the scrim descends in order for silhouetted scenes of weightlessness to play out with childlike joy on rolling chairs. Although by no means one of the choreographer’s finest works, Moon is nevertheless entertaining in its own breezy and gently satiric kind of way. I found myself more satisfied with the company’s second program, which featured the New York premiere of Via Dolorosa, a somber and mysterious piece set to the Stations of the Cross and Nico Muhly’s gorgeous, haunting score for solo harp — played with stunning poise by Parker Ramsay — and serenely danced against the abstract and painterly backdrop by visual artist Howard Hodgkin. Morris interweaves choreographic motifs to contemplatively and artfully chronicle Christ’s Passion, highlighting throughout the universality and humanity of his suffering. In short, the ensemble work is quietly riveting. The piece was smartly paired with the exuberant — if slightly repetitive — 2001 classic V, a refreshing contrast to say the least.