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On June 28 at ADF's Paige Auditorium, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago presented a non-stop spin cycle of male-female duets. In the company’s quintet of dances, tuned to the well-thumbed dial of heterosexual love, something decidedly un-sexy and more culturally chronic was at play. Jirí Kylián’s Petit Mort, Susan Marshall’s The Kiss, Twyla Tharp’s Baker’s Dozen, Alejandro Cerrudo’s Lickety-Split, and Jim Vincent’s Palladio—performed together and by this group—brought to mind a skipping record player with one voice repeating, “Never stopped moving.”

Fortunately, Hubbard Street’s 19 performers were up to the challenge, channeling their athletic virtuosity into a silken velocity where their limbs never frayed or shook. Their ensemble work rivaled the synchronicity of a Quartz watch. Their vitality and mechanical intensity would have made Richard Simmons proud. But after two and a half hours, I felt dizzy. I needed a sports drink and a cool down.

In Lickety-Split, created in 2006 by company member Alejandro Cerrudo, small gestures developed (always) into full-bodied frolicking between men and women. Fortunately, when dancer Jamie Meek channeled Jim Carey’s talent for physical slapstick, Lickety grew less sweet. It developed bite. Meek buzzed around with atom-splitting precision, broke down his joints into locomotive indecisiveness and bobbed like a ballet-trained eraser head. It was riveting. Meek’s amusing solo was also in tune with Hubbard Street’s aesthetic: the faster the better.
 

This predilection for speed started to smoke, in a run-for-the-theater exit way, with artistic director Vincent’s 2007 Palladio. To Karl Jenkin’s same-titled composition, which sounded like the brawny, major-chord injected music used for car commercials, Vincent responded by packing the stage with 18 dancers. Wearing Mara Blumenfeld’s savage-looking costumes—featuring bare-chested men in frayed skirts and women in shagged minis—the dancers engaged in a struggle to make the dance look important. Like Hercules trying to kill the nine-headed Hydra, their muscular bodies worked to match the music’s continual climaxes. Attempting to represent the famed Villa La Rotunda dome by Palladio, who was the dance’s subject, Vincent had his dancers circle the stage repeatedly. But what came full circle for me was not a sense of this Italian architect, but the feeling that Hubbard Street needs to slow down. The aerobics craze is over. Jane Fonda’s recent biography advocates meditative reflection. And I believe the American dance community wants to pursue and to marvel in something more than speed.