Bright collusion of future, past.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Cadillac Palace Theatre Chicago, Illinois April 12-28, 2002

Consider the titles of the two pieces that received their world premieres during Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's exhilarating spring season and you will have a good indication of the direction in which this tremendously malleable and adaptive company is moving.

One piece, counter/part, was the work of Jim Vincent, the American-born dancer-choreographer who spent most of his career in Europe before taking over the directorship from Hubbard Street's founder, Lou Conte, two years ago. The other was Reverse Deconstruct, choreographed by Marguerite Donlon, the Dublin-born dancer-choreographer now based in Berlin.

As both the names and content of these dances suggest, a sense of combining the old and the new, and of breaking apart existing structures and reconstituting them in revealing ways, is of the essence for the troupe right now. During the next few years, the plan is to add five or six new pieces each year to the company's repertoire. This will enable it to complement its museum approach (borrowing existing masterworks from the likes of Jiri Kylian, Nacho Duato, and Ohad Naharin) with a body of original pieces created for Hubbard Street's dancers.

Vincent's counter/part, a blend of balletically rooted movement and stunning imagery, is set primarily to excerpts from Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and interlaced with more contemplative sections from the composer's Italian Concerto in F Major for Harpsichord as well as periodic whispers in Italian. It's a highly theatrical work that plays both on the troupe's technical virtuosity and on the powerful individuality and expressiveness of its dancers. And even after two viewings its many meanings were still revealing themselves.

There are moments when it seems as if Vincent has found his inspiration in some of those wild, peasant-filled canvases of the sixteenth-century painter Bruegel (as in the opening sequence for several couples, in which passion almost imperceptibly turns a bit rough). At other times you might be watching a not-so-courtly Renaissance boudoir scene (as when a woman is pulled and flung, and pieces of her costume are ripped away). There is also something of a film noir triangular romance at work as a woman enters a gauzy white tent where she yearns for one man and is pursued by another. The splendid dancers included Mario Alberto Zambrano, Cheryl Mann, Lauri Stallings, Gregory Sample, Yael Levitin, Shannon Alvis, Steve Coutereel, Jamy Meek, Gustavo Ramirez Sansano, and Ron De Jesus.

Donlon's Reverse Deconstruct, a multi-scene work that loosely evoked the spirit of contemporary European twentysomethings, had its winning moments but never quite coalesced into a meaningful whole. On the playful side, the piece opened with a sequence in which the torsos and legs of dancers were zanily mismatched (a body-dividing metal platform, designed by Donlon, helped create the visual trick). A more darkly romantic segment featured a memorable duet in which Mann and Zambrano were exceptional.

Another scene involved a mock wrestling and chinning-bar routine for a pair of competitive males. Interspersed with these were other brief interludes that often seemed like so much filler. The original score, by German composer Claas Willeke, was notable for its many textures and moods.

Also part of the season was the Hubbard Street premiere of Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin's conjoined ritualistic pieces, Queens/Black Milk, which are part of the repertoire of his own Batsheva Dance Company.

In recent seasons, Hubbard Street has enjoyed tremendous success with Naharin's thrilling group work Minus 16 and his intimate duet Passomezzo, and he had planned to create a full-length work for the company this winter, until his wife, former Ailey dancer Marl Kajiwara, died of cancer in December. This "substitute" piece, which opens with Queens, a haunting group of solos for mourning women, and then moves on to Black Milk, in which a group of young male warriors darken their faces in camouflaging mud, was danced with impressive emotional intensity.

Also on the Hubbard Street programs were such repertoire staples as David Parsons's spikily comic The Envelope, Daniel Ezralow's now somewhat dated Read My Hips, and Trey McIntyre's brief, zestfully jazzy Split, set to the music of Art Blakey.

Following its hometown Chicago engagement, the company made its debut in Britain, with appearances at the Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Brighton Festival in May, and then to the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, in June.