Hubbard Street Dance Company (Three to Max, Too Beaucoup)
Last Sunday, I went to the Hubbard Street Dance Company for the first time. It was actually my first visit to any professional dance company ever. I still have a lot to learn about dance.
As an amateur aficionado, these are my thoughts.
Three to Max (Ohad Naharin)
While not my cup of tea just yet, this was undoubtedly interesting. The shapes and the movements of the dancers are arresting. The piece experiments with patterns quite often—with an especially notable section that involved demonic-techno counting (I’m guessing that this was counting because the words were not in English). With each number, the dancers assumed a different pose, but the counting did not rise in regular succession. Sometimes it would repeat 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4-5… These hitches really made me pay attention and even anticipate what the next move on the next number was going to be.
Naharin would have each section or idea be on stage for just the right amount of time for me to understand the visual. Then he would change things up so that the lengthy piece (over 50 minutes?) did not feel long at all. Even during the particularly fast sections, I didn’t feel like I was missing something. For example, near the end, he has three lines of dancers rotating into the spotlight for solos. Even though there were always three solos going on at the same time, they performed long enough for me to think I’ve caught all of them but short enough where I felt like I had to prepare and concentrate for the next trio so I don’t end up missing anything. Very clever.
Too Beaucoup (Sharon Eyal)
I find out after I left the theater that Eyal is the protegee of Naharin. This makes a lot of sense now, but it did not serve her well during the performance. First, the quirkiness of the dancers’ movements was reminiscent of the same in the first piece. I thought that this was just how the Company had decided to put together the program, but since Too Beaucoup came second, and was not as visually interesting as Three to Max, I got bored after a while. It felt like echoes.
Second, the fact that I thought an entire company of dancers in full-length body stockings, glow-in-the-dark contact lenses, and freaky powdered wigs were boring is saying a lot about the choreography. Unlike Three to Max, Too Beaucoup relied on the same formations for far too long.
Patterns were also in play here, but with the visual tricks created by the costuming on the darkened stage, they were harder to pick up. And since they went on (in my opinion) for too long, I just was not as invested in looking for them. Strangely enough, a lot of the patterns were very asymmetrical. I couldn’t figure out the reason for this, and that left me unhappy as well.
Overall, there was not enough change within this piece to keep me engaged beyond the novelty in the first portion of it. The pacing, the ideas, the shapes, etc. all could have used more variety. It felt like a music video that would have been cool as a Michael Jackson-length video but when it went past that time, the rest just didn’t hold up.
I tell you what though, those dancers sure were workin’. I worried for them.
