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Hubbard Street 2 Hits the Road: European Tour 2015

March 24, 2015 by 4dancers

Hubbard Street 2
Left: Jugendstil-Festhalle, Landau in der Pfalz. Photo by Andrea Thompson. Middle: Hubbard Street 2 dancers in Aschaffenburg, from left: Katie Kozul, Zachary Enquist, Elliot Hammans, Jules Joseph and Adrienne Lipson. Photo by Andrea Thompson. Right: Sketch by audience member of HS2 performance in Heerlen, the Netherlands, signed by the company. Photo by Zachary Enquist.

by Andrea Thompson

After a whirlwind tour of three central European countries in late February and early March, regular 4dancers contributor and Hubbard Street 2 Dancer Andrea Thompson found a quiet spot and answered some questions about the experience.

Where did you go?

We flew into Frankfurt and drove around Germany to perform in Rüsselsheim, Landau, Aschaffenburg, Idar-Oberstein and Essen. After that we drove across the border to Heerlen in the Netherlands, and then flew to our last stop in Treviso, Italy.

How long did you stay in each city?

Just long enough to arrive and sometimes have a workshop that day, then tech and perform the following day. We stayed longer in Rüsselsheim because we had an acclimation day there when we landed, and we had a day off in Landau as well.

What was a typical day on tour like? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Editorial Tagged With: andrea thompson, ballet class, Dance Tour, European Tour, German Tour, Hessisches Staatsballett, hs2, hubbard street 2, Italian Tour, Julie Ballard, Netherlands, Terence Marling, Tyler Schnese

Dance Footwear: Sockage In The Sock Age

January 29, 2015 by 4dancers

Hubbard Street 2
Hubbard Street 2 Dancers Andrea Thompson and Jules Joseph in Long Story Short
by 2014 International Commissioning Project choreographer Ihsan Rustem. Photo by Todd Rosenberg.

As a dancer, I spend my entire day in socks. They are my preferred footwear — my dance shoes, my ballet slippers, my performance-wear, my fashion statement, my secret weapon. With only one exception (Alejandro Cerrudo’s Lickety-Split), all of the repertory I have performed onstage with Hubbard Street 2 has either been in calf-height socks that neatly match the rest of the costume, or ankle-height socks that match my skin tone. The latter look has been dubbed by some as “the Hubbard Street sock,” but it’s not just this company that performs in stocking feet. Most contemporary dance shows I’ve been to in the past six years have been performed either barefoot or in socks — a phenomenon I’ve come to understand and love, but which also elicits from the audience questions like, “Why are the dancers wearing socks? Are they in their pajamas? Where are their shoes?” Hopefully by sharing my passion for this form of footwear I can debunk and demystify the all-important Contemporary Dance Sock.

HS2 dancer
Hubbard Street 2 Dancer Andrea Thompson in socks at the Hubbard Street Dance Center. Photo courtesy of Andrea Thompson.

The first time I danced in socks was in 2009 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance. We were working with Alessio Silvestrin from The Forsythe Company, and without fail he wore socks over ballet shoes in every rehearsal. Coming from a ballet background, this was a new concept to me. I knew it was trendy to wear socks over ballet shoes in order to warm your feet faster for the first combinations at the barre, but I had no idea that in contemporary dance, people actually wore socks onstage in performance. Being the dutiful student I was, I tried to copy Alessio’s look, but I didn’t yet fully grasp the art of dancing in socks. I tried out all kinds in rehearsals: crew-cut athletic socks, calf-height socks of all synthetic blends, those plush fuzzy socks that are great in the wintertime, warm slipper-socks with rubber grips on the bottoms. When so many sock varieties failed to satisfy me I tried keeping my ballet shoes on and danced barefoot a few times, but soon realized that most contemporary choreography really works best in socks.

My friend Carson Stein (now a dancer with Liss Fain Dance and Sharp & Fine in San Francisco) tipped me off to the most important factor of sockage in dance: high cotton content. Synthetic blends had me slipping all over the place. Thick, fuzzy socks tended to stick more to the floor than to my feet, and my poor toes were swimming inside with all the extra room. Athletic socks worked alright, but I soon found that I was bothered by all the extra padding underneath certain parts of my feet and wanted to be able to feel my own skin nearly on the floor, but with a thin layer in between that hugged my foot and enabled me to slide around a bit. Enter the H&M sock: with 83% cotton content (higher in select styles!), it was a revelation. To this day it is the most affordable, most reliable sock I have found to dance in.

Hubbard Street 2 dancers footwear
Hubbard Street 2 Dancers in socks at the Hubbard Street Dance Center. Photo courtesy of Andrea Thompson.

Of course there are trends. American Apparel’s knee-high athletic socks were all the rage to dance in a few years ago, particularly the ones with stripes. I’ve found many a fun pair of patterned and unusually-colored socks in the men’s section of Uniqlo. They’re a little more slippery than my standard H&M sock, but depending on the floor they can also work. I usually go for a calf-height sock, but if they’re taller, like the men’s socks from Uniqlo, I’ll just fold them over. Hubbard Street is the only place where I’ve worn ankle-height socks, but when they’re dyed just right, they do a great job of continuing the line of the leg. One could argue that ballet shoes and bare feet do similar things for line, but wearing socks enables you to do all the sliding and swooshing around of contemporary choreography while keeping the skin of your feet in one piece.

For a while, even after I had gotten used to dancing in socks in rehearsals, I preferred to take ballet with ballet shoes on. Then I gradually started taking barre in socks and putting shoes on only for center. Then, sometimes, I would forget to change footwear during class. After I had an ankle surgery, I stayed in socks the whole time to make sure I could really feel the alignment of all the bones in my feet on the floor. I thought I would eventually put ballet shoes back on for at least part of class, but after trying a few times I realized I preferred to feel as much of my foot as close to the floor as possible. My feet feel more supple, dexterous and intelligent if they aren’t closed up in a shoe, dealing with leather pads under my toes and fabric bunching up inside.

Hubbard Street 2 dancer Andrea Thompson
Hubbard Street 2 Dancer Andrea Thompson in Long Story Short by 2014 International Commissioning Project choreographer Ihsan Rustem. Photo by Todd Rosenberg.

When my feet are free to play the floor in socks, I have a much better sense of where my weight is and I feel like I have access to 100% of my articulation, instead of feeling like I’m dancing in mittens or shoeboxes. And I think similar to the idea of those free-running shoe-gloves, you learn to deal with impact in a totally different way when you don’t have any padding underneath your joints. Jumping in socks was a little scary at first, without having the reassuring leather padding underneath the balls of my feet. But after some practice I found that in order to soften my landings while staying buoyant I was actually informing the entire rest of my body from the information I was getting from my feet. My plié had to adjust and become more sensitive, and my landings and takeoffs have, I believe, benefitted from the new knowledge.

From ballet to floorwork to sliding, slicing and swooshing, socks provide the perfect blend of friction, articulation, and maneuverability and so, no, we contemporary dancers have not forgotten to put on our shoes. We revel in our sockage.


Andrea Thompson and Hubbard Street 2 tour Europe with mixed repertory February 21–March 5, presented by Norddeutsche Konzertdirekton. Performances in Heerlen, the Netherlands; Treviso, Italy; and four cities in Germany will feature recent works by Bryan Arias, Ihsan Rustem, Loni Landon, HS2 Director Terence Marling and Hubbard Street Resident Choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo. For a complete HS2 touring schedule, artist profiles and more, visit hubbardstreetdance.com.


Andrea Thompson photo by Quinn Wharton
Hubbard Street 2’s Andrea Thompson

Contributor Andrea Thompson (Maplewood, NJ) trained at the New Jersey School of Ballet, American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School and the Ailey School in New York City. Thompson has also studied at the Juilliard School, Northwest Professional Dance Project, Springboard Danse Montréal, Nederlands Dans Theater and Batsheva Dance Company, which brought opportunities to perform choreography by Gregory Dolbashian, William Forsythe, Natalia Horecna, Jessica Lang, Marina Mascarell, Idan Sharabi, Robyn Mineko Williams, Paul Lightfoot and Sol León. At the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, under the direction of Summer Lee Rhatigan, she trained with and performed works by Christian Burns, Alex Ketley, Thomas McManus, Robert Moses, Ohad Naharin, Alessio Silvestrin and Bobbi Jene Smith. Thompson joined Hubbard Street 2 in August 2013, following work in San Francisco and New York with Zhukov Dance Theatre, Chang Yong Sung, LoudHoundMovement, Backwoods Dance Project and the Foundry.

Filed Under: Editorial Tagged With: alejandro cerrudo, alessio silvestrin, andrea thompson, Ballet, carson stein, contemporary dance, dance socks, h & m sock, hubbard street 2, liss fain dance, sharp & fine, the forsythe company

Hubbard Street 2 Kicks Off The Season With A Challenging Triple Play

December 9, 2014 by 4dancers

 

Hubbard Street Second Company
Hubbard Street 2 Dancer Andrea Thompson. Photo by Todd Rosenberg Photography 2014.

by Andrea Thompson

I am now in my second year with Hubbard Street 2 (HS2), and it has been quite the season so far. We’ve already created two new works through the International Commissioning Project (IC Project) which we just premiered on tour at Broward College, and we’re working on our third right now, which will debut at the Harris Theater as part of Eat + Drink to the Beat on December 16. Not to mention HS2 also collaborated with Hubbard Street’s main company and The Second City on the world premiere of The Art of Falling back in October. Here’s how all of that action has gone down in the studio: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Editorial Tagged With: andrea thompson, bryan arias, harris theater, hedwig dances, hs2, hubbard street 2, hubbard street dance company, ihsan rustem, second city, victor alexander

Inside Of “In C”

June 17, 2014 by 4dancers

Hubbard Street 2 Apprentice Adrienne Lipson reviews notes in a rehearsal at the Hubbard Street Dance Center, for collaboratively devised choreography to “In C” by composer Terry Riley. Photo by Andrea Thompson.
Hubbard Street 2 Apprentice Adrienne Lipson reviews notes in a rehearsal at the Hubbard Street Dance Center, for collaboratively devised choreography to “In C” by composer Terry Riley. Photo by Andrea Thompson.

by Andrea Thompson

On Friday, June 6, I had the unique pleasure of performing a work’s world premiere and closing show within a nine-hour span. These were vastly different experiences — and that was the point.

For the past two months, my fellow Hubbard Street 2 dancers and I had been knee-deep in creation, collaborating with the Citizen Musician Fellows of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. The focus was “In C,” a piece by composer Terry Riley that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. It’s an unusual work to learn, requiring both its sheet music and a set of instructions for playing — and I mean “play” quite literally. Its structure is improvisatory in nature: Each musician is allowed to play the 53 musical phrases or “cells” of “In C” as many times as he or she pleases, dropping out and reentering the score at will. Riley’s instructions contain goals and guidelines, but outside of these each musician has freedom to decide in the moment what and when to play.

In the spirit of game-playing, listening, and the ephemeral nature of performance, we created — with the help of choreographer and Hubbard Street 2 director Terence Marling — our own approach to this ever-changing music. From early on, we knew we would perform an outdoor show to a recording of “In C” prior to an evening show accompanied live by the Citizen Musician Fellows.

In other words: One show would have a predetermined length, while the other could last anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes. Gulp.

We embarked on our choreographic journey by studying the cells, picking out landmarks we could identify regardless of how the score was interpreted. Cells of whole notes became our best, most recognizable friends. After familiarizing ourselves with the score, we had to figure out what the nature of our choreographic content would be. Games and improvisation seemed a natural fit given the structure of this music, so we set to work brainstorming new and favorite improv tasks, sharing visual images we wanted to achieve, and developing movement phrases inspired by the music.

Notes for choreography
Scan of notes made by Hubbard Street 2 Dancers and Director Terrence Marling, for their collaboratively devised choreography to “In C” by composer Terry Riley. Courtesy of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.

Sequencing all that material was like putting a puzzle together. Certain ideas fell naturally in line with specific cells and became markers — assuming we’d be able to hear them in live performance — and then it was a matter of filling in the blanks with tasks that linked together logically. Like the musicians, we could stretch ideas out longer to challenge each other, or speed through them when it felt right. We developed a long string of cues and signals to indicate to each other when it was time to progress. We ended up with around 43 tasks, which spanned Riley’s 53 cells as a kind of roadmap. Our director Terry used a giant chronometer to denote each change of cell he heard in the music, so we would always know approximately where we were.

Of course, with our piece tied to spontaneity, every time we practiced our structure we landed somewhat differently on the recorded music. Terry rehearsed us to several different recordings of the piece in the week leading up to our shows, so that we wouldn’t be thrown off by unpredictable variations in the live music. And although we rehearsed a few times at Symphony Center’s Buntrock Hall with the musicians as well as every day in our West Loop studios, taking our piece outside meant encountering a whole new set of elements we could do nothing to prepare for indoors.

Our debut of “In C” kicked off the inaugural Living Loop Festival (produced by Chicago Loop Alliance and High Concept Laboratories). It was a gorgeous morning downtown when we arrived, with blue skies and warm temperatures. Our stage was in the shade at first, but by noon the sun was beaming down, warming our bodies and our marley as we adjusted to all the sights and sounds around Federal Plaza. Some people sat with their lunches just a few feet away from us, while others stayed further back and watched from a distance. Many stopped to catch just a few minutes of the piece; I even saw people across the street stopping to take in the scene.

Hubbard Street 2 performing outdoors
Hubbard Street 2 Dancers perform to “In C” by Terry Riley in Federal Plaza, to open The Living Loop’s inaugural, summer-long performance festival. From left: Adrienne Lipson, Katie Kozul and Andrea Thompson. Photo by Todd Rosenberg.

All the outdoor elements lent themselves beautifully to the nature of the music and the choreographic structure we created to it. “In C” is about paying attention to your surroundings, and deciding to either counter them or let them inform you. Each spectator of our performance became a part of “In C” as they strolled by. The dancers tuned into each other, the music, the clock — and simultaneously took cues from passersby, the Alexander Calder sculpture sharing our plaza, buildings, and the perfectly blue sky above. All told, the performance was an exhilarating experience I won’t soon forget.

The evening performance was an equally memorable, though entirely different occasion. Buntrock Hall was set with a marley in the center of the space, while audience seating and musicians surrounded it on all sides. The piece began with a xylophone — the only constant element involved — setting the tempo, after which the musicians walked to their places and one by one, began playing the first cell. A few seconds later we followed to the edges of the space to enter one at a time as well.

Hubbard Street 2 performing
Hubbard Street 2 Dancers perform “In C” by Terry Riley with the Citizen Musician Fellows of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, June 6, 2014 in Buntrock Hall at Symphony Center. Center: Hubbard Street 2 Dancer Andrea Thompson, with, from left: Lissa Smith, Jules Joseph, Richard Walters and Odbayar Batsuuri. Photo by Todd Rosenberg.

Musician and dancer alike shared a palpable sense of anticipation. Everyone was open to informing and being informed by what we heard and saw — the backbone and the beauty of our collaboration — and I could sense that cooperative atmosphere as soon as I entered the room. Though we’d rehearsed together before, I was never more cognizant of the musicians’ eyes than during the show. In performance I was acutely aware that how I danced could have an impact on the upright bass, or the trumpet, or the viola — which could in turn affect how other musicians made their sounds. The unpredictable nature of “In C” became even more exciting knowing that I was part dancer, part listener and part co-conductor. Performing the piece with brilliant, enthusiastic live musicians brought it to life in a way completely different from performing outside earlier that day, yet equally fascinating.

It’s hard to believe the project we spent nearly two months on is now over, but the experience has certainly impacted me for the long term. Every member of HS2 contributed to the creation of our structure in a significant way, and I think we all came to realize the value of “just throwing ideas out there.” As a group, we tried every single proposal and held each other to refining what was unclear. We tried to create a work true to Terry Riley’s musical guidelines and appropriate to the playful, unpredictable nature of his piece. I think we not only succeeded in that, but also succeeded in opening ourselves up to new possibilities of how to choreograph, how to work together and how to collaborate with artists of other genres. Our “In C” may be over, but it has left an eternal eighth note–playing xylophone in my head and with it, an eagerness to enter the next cell.

Andrea Thompson enters her second year with Hubbard Street 2 at the start of the company’s 2014–15 season. During Hubbard Street’s satellite Summer Intensive Program at the University of Iowa, Thompson will teach ballet technique and HS2 repertoire to pre-professional dancers ages 14–17 from across the country. For a complete HS2 touring schedule, artist profiles and more, visit hubbardstreetdance.com.

________________________________

Andrea Thompson photo by Quinn WhartonContributor Andrea Thompson (Maplewood, NJ) trained at the New Jersey School of Ballet, American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School and the Ailey School in New York City. Thompson has also studied at the Juilliard School, Northwest Professional Dance Project, Springboard Danse Montréal, Nederlands Dans Theater and Batsheva Dance Company, which brought opportunities to perform choreography by Gregory Dolbashian, William Forsythe, Natalia Horecna, Jessica Lang, Marina Mascarell, Idan Sharabi, Robyn Mineko Williams, Paul Lightfoot and Sol León. At the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, under the direction of Summer Lee Rhatigan, she trained with and performed works by Christian Burns, Alex Ketley, Thomas McManus, Robert Moses, Ohad Naharin, Alessio Silvestrin and Bobbi Jene Smith. Thompson joined Hubbard Street 2 in August 2013, following work in San Francisco and New York with Zhukov Dance Theatre, Chang Yong Sung, LoudHoundMovement, Backwoods Dance Project and the Foundry.

 

Filed Under: 4dancers, Making Dances Tagged With: andrea thompson, buntrock hall, chicago dance, choreography, civic orchestra of chicago, hs2, hubbard street 2, hubbard street dance chicago, In C, living loop festival, making dances, Terence Marling, Terry Riley

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