Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Announces 40th Anniversary Season Programming

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and Artistic Director Glenn Edgerton are excited to announce the main company's 2017-18 season performances in Chicago celebrating the company's 40 year history. Tickets to the three engagements at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Millennium Park located at 205 East Randolph Street, and a fourth performance at the Auditorium Theatre, located at 50 E Congress Pkwy, will be available to subscribers for renewal beginning April 13 as a Season 40 subscription; Season 40 subscriptions and single tickets will be available for purchase following the Season 39 Summer Series, June 8-11, 2017.

Says Glenn Edgerton: "Hubbard Street's Season 40 programming expresses both looking back at what the company has accomplished over the past four decades, while also looking forward at the potential of the company for freshness and innovation."

The Season 40 Fall Series, September 21-24, 2017 at the Harris Theater, features an immersive and interactive dance installation curated by Peter Chu and Edgerton, covering all spaces of the Harris Theater; the first performance of its kind in Hubbard Street's four decade history. Chu, a former dancer for Canadian Dance Company Kidd Pivot, and Artistic Director of chuthis., has choreographed for several Chicago dance companies including Giordano Dance Chicago, as well as Hubbard Street 2.

Says Glenn Edgerton: "This program will be reinventing how dance is being seen. A performance of this kind that changes the perspective of the audiences' experience is something I have dreamed that we would do for many years, and it is finally coming to fruition."

Hubbard Street's Winter Series, December 7-10, 2017 at the Harris Theater, celebrates one of today's most current and inventive choreographers, Crystal Pite. The program features the full length duet, A Picture of You Falling, first performed as an excerpt by Hubbard Street in March 2014, and two Hubbard Street premieres; Grace Engine, and The Other You.

Says Glenn Edgerton: "Crystal Pite is a visionary and someone who I hope will continue to be part of the fabric of Hubbard Street moving forward. Her sense of creativity lends itself to progressiveness and a new way of looking at dance."

The Spring Series, March 23-24, 2018 will mark Hubbard Street's return to the Auditorium Theatre for the first time in 20 years. This two-night engagement, dedicated to Hubbard Street's beloved Resident Choreographer, Alejandro Cerrudo, will feature a full evening of Cerrudo's work weaving together both audience favorites from his past eight years as the company's Resident Choreographer as well as exciting new work. The Auditorium Theatre announces their 2017-18 Season this Wednesday.

Hubbard Street concludes Season 40 June 7-10, 2018 at the Harris Theater, with the Summer Series featuring a full evening-length work reimagining Ohad Naharin's Minus 16, one of his most popular and most celebrated pieces, choreographed in 1999 and first performed by Hubbard Street in 2000. The New York Times says "Since becoming the director of Batsheva in 1990, Naharin has combined pure movement and theater in pieces charged with tension and drama that nonetheless, he claims, go beyond political metaphor or any particular meaning; Naharin is instead 'turned on by the act of composition,' by textures, colors, rhythms."

2017-18 season subscriptions are $120-$330 and will be available for renewal on April 13 at the Hubbard Street Ticket Office, by phone at 312-850-9744 and online at hubbardstreetdance.com/subscribe. New subscriptions and single tickets will be available for purchase following the Season 39 Summer Series June 8-11, 2017. Thursday performances begin at 7:30pm, Friday and Saturday performances begin at 8pm, and Sunday matinée performances begin at 3pm. Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's 2017-18 domestic and international touring engagements, special projects, residencies, and additional collaborations will be announced at later dates. Programming is subject to change.

About Peter Chu

Peter Chu began training as a competitive gymnast before nurturing his artistry at Dussich Dance Studio on Florida's Merritt Island. Chu pushed further into his study of technique while making his first forays into choreography under the direction of Benjamin Harkarvy at the Juilliard School in Manhattan, where he was awarded the Hector Zaraspe Prize for Choreography upon completion of his BFA. He has performed and toured internationally with Edgar Zendejas' ezdanza, Crystal Pite's Kidd Pivot, and BJM Danse, formerly Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal; his commercial work includes A New Day in Las Vegas, starring Celine Dion, and the lead role in singer Christina Perri's music video for "Jar of Hearts." In 2008, Chu formed the Las Vegas project-based company, chuthis., and recently presented his works Face Her and Smile Masking at Festival International de DansEncore, through a residency partnership with the West Las Vegas Library Theatre. Recipient of the prestigious 2010 Capezio A.C.E. Award for Choreography, his choreographic credits include two seasons of So You Think You Can Dance on Fox TV and the ARTV series Meneuse de Claques in Québec; original works for New Dialect, Orlando Ballet Theatre, Houston Met Dance Company, Nederlands Dans Theater's Summer Intensive, the Perry-Mansfield New Works Festival and others; and Naomi Stikeman's Çaturn, consulted by Robert Lepage. Through chuthis. he has launched an annual Movement Intensive for technical and artistic development, also implementing chuthis. moves: customized workshops spanning two or three days. Chu has guest-taught and served as faculty for numerous programs and organizations throughout Canada and the U.S. including BODYTRAFFIC, Harvard University, Western Michigan University, the Movement Invention Project, the Dance Teacher Summit, and Springboard Danse Montréal. Visit chuthis.net to learn more.

About Crystal Pite

Born in Terrace, British Columbia and raised on the Canadian west coast, choreographer and performer Crystal Pite is a former company member of Ballet British Columbia and William Forsythe's Ballett Frankfurt. Pite's professional choreographic debut was in 1990, at Ballet British Columbia; since then, she has created more than 40 works for companies such as Nederlands Dans Theater, Cullberg Ballet, Ballett Frankfurt, the National Ballet of Canada, Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, Ballet British Columbia, and Louise Lecavalier / Fou Glorieux, plus collaborations with the Electric Company Theatre and acclaimed director Robert Lepage. In 2002, Pite formed the company Kidd Pivot, which integrates movement, original music, text and rich visual design, balancing sharp exactitude with irreverence and risk. Kidd Pivot tours nationally and internationally, performing critically acclaimed works including Dark Matters, Lost Action, The You Show and The Tempest Replica. Pite is the recipient of the Banff Centre's Clifford E. Lee Award (1995), the Bonnie Bird North American Choreography Award (2004), the Isadora Award (2005), two Dora Mavor Moore Awards (2009 and 2012), a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award (2006) and the Governor General of Canada's Performing Arts Award, Mentorship Program (2008). Pite also received the 2011 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award, the inaugural Lola Award in 2012, and the Canada Council's 2012 Jacqueline Lemieux Prize. Visit kiddpivot.org to learn more.

About Alejandro Cerrudo

Hubbard Street Resident Choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo was born in Madrid, Spain, and trained at the Real Conservatorio Profesional de Danza de Madrid. His professional career began in 1998 and includes work with Victor Ullate Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, and Nederlands Dans Theater 2. Cerrudo joined Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in 2005, was named Choreographic Fellow in 2008, and became the company's first Resident Choreographer in 2009. Fourteen works choreographed to date for Hubbard Street include collaborations with The Second City, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Nederlands Dans Theater. These pieces and additional commissions are in repertory at companies around the U.S. as well as in Australia, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands; touring engagements have brought his work still further abroad, to audiences in Algeria, Canada, Morocco, and Spain. In March 2012, Pacific Northwest Ballet invited Cerrudo to choreograph his first work for the company, Memory Glow, upon receiving the Joyce Theater Foundation's second Rudolf Nureyev Prize for New Dance. Additional honors include an award from the Boomerang Fund for Artists (2011), and a Prince Prize for Commissioning Original Work from the Prince Charitable Trusts (2012) for his acclaimed, first evening-length work, One Thousand Pieces. In March 2016, Switzerland's Ballett Basel premieres his second evening-length work, Sleeping Beauty, at Theater Basel. Cerrudo was one of four choreographers invited by New York City Ballet principal Wendy Whelan to create and perform original duets for "Restless Creature," and he is United States Artists' 2014 USA Donnelley Fellow.

About Ohad Naharin

Ohad Naharin was born in Israel and was raised in an artistic environment - his mother taught dance and composition, and his father was a doctor of Psychology and an actor. Naharin began his training as a dancer with Batsheva Dance Company and continued his studies at Julliard. He danced for one season in the Martha Graham Company and with Maurice Bejart. Between 1980 and 1990 Naharin was active in the New York dance scene and worked with various companies. Jirí Kylián of the Nederlands Dance Theater (NDT) saw Naharin's work, which began a long partnership between the two and NDT. In 1990 Naharin became Artistic Director of Batsheva Dance Company and created KYR, a full-length work commissioned by the Israel Festival, Jerusalem, for which he composed the music with Israeli rock group The Tractor's Revenge. KYR was a first landmark in the succession of pieces which gave birth to the "new" Batsheva - bold, sweeping, and physically sensual. Naharin's work is also in the repertoire of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, The Cullberg Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater, Le Ballet du Grand Theatre de Geneve, Compania Nacional de Danzade Madrid, and Opèra National de Paris.

About the Harris Theater for Music and Dance

The Harris Theater, opened in 2003 in Chicago's Millennium Park, is the first multi-use performing arts venue to be built in the Chicago downtown area since 1929. The Theater hosts the most diverse offerings of any venue in Chicago, featuring the city's world-renowned music and dance institutions and the Harris Theater Presents series of acclaimed national and International Artists and ensembles.

The Harris's mission is to make the arts relevant and accessible to audiences of all ages and communities, and through its partnerships with an array of Chicago's music and dance performing arts organizations, has earned national recognition as a distinctive model for collaboration, performance, and artistic advancement.

About Hubbard Street

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's core purpose is to bring artists, art and audiences together to enrich, engage, educate, transform and change lives through the experience of dance. Celebrating Season 40 in 2017-18, under the artistic leadership of Glenn Edgerton, Hubbard Street continues to innovate, supporting ascendant creative talent while presenting repertory by internationally recognized living artists. Hubbard Street has grown through the establishment of multiple platforms alongside the Lou Conte Dance Studio - now in its fifth decade of providing a wide range of public classes and pre-professional training - while extensive Youth, Education, Community, Adaptive Dance and Family Programs keep the organization deeply connected to its hometown. Visit hubbardstreetdance.com for artist profiles, touring schedules, and much more.

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