On a program with three New York premieres, the company seems stuck in an international style, though there are flickers of something more distinctive.
The lights go up on two dancers, each isolated in a zone of light. As the two trade moves and trade places, recognizable elements keep recurring: the side-to-side head isolations of Indian dance, a duck walk from vogueing, a hip-hop crotch grab. The ingredients are familiar, but the combination is novel.
Such is “A Duo,” the most exciting of three New York premieres on Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s program at the Joyce Theater this week.
Under the leadership of Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell since 2021, the company still seems caught in the international-style conformity that has restricted it in the past. Previous directors had been connected to Nederlands Dance Theater and beholden to its aesthetic. They tended to program the same modish choreographers as seemingly every other repertory troupe. By the evidence of this program, Fisher-Harrell has not rejected that legacy.
The bill starts with a work by the ubiquitous Ohad Naharin (the only selection not new in New York) and ends with one by the Nederlands alum Johan Inger. All the way through, what’s most entertaining feels slight. But along the way come intimations of something fresh and distinctive.
The choreographer of “A Duo” is Aszure Barton, the company’s resident artist. The opening night cast, Shota Miyoshi and Cyrie Topete, performed with sass and flair. What makes the piece work, though, is the music: tracks by the Catalan musician Marina Herlop that mix rhythmic syllables of the Indian Carnatic tradition with her own made-up vocalizations; it’s an ersatz sound turned original. Barton’s choreography matches every detail in the music with precision, and her own collage of borrowings and personal eccentricities becomes persuasive.
The Naharin selection is a vintage one, “Black Milk” from 1990. It’s a primitivist ritual set to the driving yet circling marimba loops of Paul Smadbeck. Five men, shirtless in culottes, mark themselves with a dark, muddy liquid from a bucket, then process in a bouncy march or leap up and out in closely overlapping order. The work has a master choreographer’s clarity but not yet a unique voice.
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