Hubbard Steet on the move.

You won't find Hubbard Street Dance Chicago on Hubbard Street anymore--but hold on to your hat. You'll find its headquarters on South Wabash Avenue. Go through an inconspicuous doorway, take the unimpressive elevator, and enter the modest space the company has occupied for ten years.

"We're moving to terrific new offices soon," says executive director Gail Kalver confidently as Chicago's El trains rattle past outside, "offices where we'll have more than just one shower for everyone, like we do now." Make no mistake, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, one of the most vital success stories in today's dance world, is going places in more ways than one.

Choreographer Kevin O'Day is vigorously rehearsing his new work, Hellblondegroove, readying it for debut during the company's spring stint at Chicago's Shubert Theatre. In the other studio rehearsal assistant Sandi J. Cooksey is teaching a company class. Kalver bustles toward the executive warren in back where she disappears into her Mother Hubbard cupboard of an office.

In a more spacious front room, Buddy sprawls on a couch, casting a watchful eye at Lou Conte, artistic director and mastermind of this zesty company. Buddy is an elderly golden retriever so close to his master that some say he practically runs the joint. He glances hopefully at a big box of Scrumptious Dog Kookies. "Later," says Lou with a nod. Then Conte settles back in his swivel chair to tell how he's built a company that works like a well-oiled machine, with a repertoire that any troupe would envy: O'Day, Twyla Tharp, James Kudelka, Daniel Ezralow, David Parsons, Margo Sappington, Lynne Taylor-Corbett, Bob Fosse, Mauricio Wainrot--to mention just some. And now he discusses new acquisitions with Jiri Kylian in Holland, the Rambert's Christopher Bruce in London, and Nacho Duato in Madrid.

The company's judicious mixture of jazz, ballet, and. modem performed by outstanding personalities who "seem like real people," as one critic termed them, has boosted Hubbard Street to great popularity in Chicago and anywhere they appear. These days that means just about everywhere, from the Ravinia and Singapore festivals to New York City, Paris, Cologne, and all around the U.S. When the company went into the 2,000-seat Shubert Theatre for its three-week Chicago season this spring, it anticipated a virtual sellout based on last year's 87 percent attendance.

Just how has this come about? What it boils down to is the shrewdness, vision, and gut feeling for picking dancers, choreographers, and executives (and then treating them right) that modest, down-to-earth Conte possesses. Conte has, from childhood, been steeped in dance of all kinds--musicals, ballet, tap (which he started to learn when he was just seven back home in Du Quoin, Illinois). Soon he was good enough at tapping and talking to become a minicelebrity on a local TV show. "When I was twelve," he recalls, "we moved to another town and my new teacher, Fred Henze, instilled in me the importance of ballet and jazz." While still a senior in high school, Conte opened a small dance studio (with the help of his father), attracting some sixty students. "But I'd always been interested in animals, so I decided to study zoology at Southern Illinois University." He kept dancing though, studying with Marie Hale (now artistic director of Ballet Florida). "She convinced me that I should postpone my zoology studies till later and pursue a dance career," says Conte. Summer stock and ballet lessons at the Ellis-Du Boulay School in Chicago whetted Conte's artistic ambition further. He went to New York City, landed, at just twenty-one, a chorus job in the original How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which led to Mame and other musicals on Broadway and on the road. All the time he kept taking ballet classes. "In those days I really wanted to join the Joffrey," he says. "I thought it had the most interesting ballets of anyone." Turned down by that company, he went to Europe and the Middle East with musicals and even joined a nightclub act for a while. Finally, in the mid-seventies he headed back to Chicago and opened his studio.

The next step (which Conte claims he never really planned) was a company. It started off modestly in 1977, just four women from his studio sent out to perform at schools and nursing homes for senior citizens under a philanthropic organization called Urban Gateways. Dancing Conte's lively, jazz-charged choreography, Claire Bataille, Karen Frankel-Jones, Ann Hodgkins, and Terry Lees so impressed people that Conte was persuaded to give a concert at Chicago Public Library's Cultural Center. It was a resounding success. "The dancers were paid for everything even though it wasn't a lot," says Conte. "We earned $105 per performance, four shows a week. They were getting $80 a week, which was pretty good in 1978." Hubbard Street was thriving. "I started going to auditions locally and to New York, adding more dancers," Conte says with a laugh. "I wanted to give employment." The Chicago Tribune headlined one 1982 report, "Hubbard Street Troupe Wows French Audience," while the Sun-Times declared the company "a slice of America in motion."

As the troupe became better known, the late Ruth Page, a big dance influence in the Chicago area, "was always encouraging, giving a helping hand," says Conte. Richard Carter, a TV producer who admired dance, taped the company for a special on public TV's local Channel 11. A second special on the same station, aired nationally in 1985, and hosted by Gwen Verdon, helped even more. Featured in various other TV programs since then, Hubbard Street has benefited greatly from this mass audience exposure, helping to earn it the Governor's Award for its "prominence and exemplary achievement" and instant recognition in unlikely places. Not long ago board member William N. Wood Prince was walking down a street in Warsaw, Poland, wearing a "Hubbcap" (a baseball cap with Hubbard Street's logo on it) and was approached by some youngsters who excitedly exclaimed, "Hubbard, Hubbard, we know you. Dancers from Chicago!"

In the early days, Conte's all-around show-biz background helped when it came to choreographing. Now, though many of his works remain in the repertoire, they no longer dominate. This season "Georgia," a pas de deux excerpted from Roses from the Blues, set to Willie Nelson's version of the song, is on view along with Conte's popular signature work, The 40's, "an audience favorite that never seems to lose steam," as Chicago dance critic Lynn Voedisch puts it. "But," says Conte frankly, "I don't think I'm good enough to do the kinds of things I like. It's really hard to choreograph and run a company."

Philosophy led Conte to one of his most important decisions so far. Five years ago he invited Twyla Tharp to set works on the company. The arrangement was symbiotic. Conte got a world-renowned choreographer he admired and needed. Tharp got dancers who could do what she wanted the way she wanted--an important ingredient for her particular genius. Yet, says Conte, "I don't want people to get the idea we're Twyla's Chicago branch. I'm always on the lookout for choreographers and going on trips seeking out talent here and abroad. Trouble is, some of the previous guest choreographers I'd brought in didn't work out--at least not with the public. But the seven pieces we've had from Twyla have been fabulous! Moreover, we have a board of directors who support my artistic vision, and, thankfully, we're able to pay for her."

In the move, which brought Shelley Washington Whitman as rehearsal director for the Tharp Project, The Fugue, Sue's Leg, Baker's Dozen, The Golden Section, and the particularly popular Nine Sinatra Songs and Fait Accompli were set on the company. For Hubbard's dancers Tharp specifically created I Remember Clifford, one of the big hits at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival last August.

"People ask me, `Why do we have so much Twyla?'" says Conte. "The reason is, aside from the fact that I love her, you can't just touch the surface of Tharp. In order to do it successfully, you have to be immersed. We've really invested, signing a contract to license some of her pieces for five years, and think they'll become staples in our rep.

"Twyla works harder than anyone I've ever seen in my life. Her principles, her work ethic--she's totally focused from the moment she walks in early to watch the videos, do her homework, and stay in the studio all day, to the moment when she goes back and reedits the videos. Before I met her I'd heard all these stories about how difficult she was. Okay, she's demanding. You'd better do what you agreed you'd do. In that way she's `difficult.' But so am I!

"Even though she has other projects," he continues about Tharp, "our Tharp contact will go on. Hopefully she'll do two more smaller pieces for us--a solo, perhaps a duet, trio, or quartet."

Conte, for all his modesty, has a keen eye, and is so demanding he's been called a perfectionist. "No I'm not," he protests. "Something's either wrong or it's right."

One of the big bones in Mother Hubbard's cupboard right now, I Remember Clifford, has been a special break for one of the troupe's outstanding dancers, Ron De Jesus. Set to fifties jazz classics and dedicated to jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown, it's been described as "a triumph of mature artistry" for Tharp and the role of a lifetime for De Jesus. "It was good exercise for our brains as well as our bodies," says De Jesus. "With Twyla you really have to think what you're doing." In Clifford, which Chicago Tribune critic Richard Christiansen called "a kind of melodramatic morality play," De Jesus has the opportunity to establish a character, a loner, who threads through the dance. "I was surprised when it seemed to become a story," he says, "a story about an outsider."

Conte's pursuit of perfection is matched by his devotion to the well-being of his dancers. For the dancers these two passions make the company special. Says De Jesus: "We come first. Lou makes it a point to establish a really good support system" which includes health insurance, contracts, a guaranteed salary paid fifty-two weeks a year, and vacation pay.

There are no star names at Hubbard but "an ensemble of soloists," as Conte calls them: "They have to be well trained in ballet, they have to move naturally, they have to have a good command of modem and jazz. I encourage individuality among my people because originally I chose dancers of all sorts of shapes and sizes, the criterion being that they could dance well. I want Hubbard Street to be the star of whatever we do. We're not like a classical ballet company where you can do the same thing over and over; we have to have premieres, exciting things to get the marketing focus. I want to make it an attractive place for talented dancers."

With a company of twenty, including the occasional guest artist (who dances unfeatured in the ensemble), Hubbard Street continues to tour extensively at home and abroad. Among its important dates this year are Jacob's Pillow in August and a fall German tour after the Cologne festival. In 1984, for the first time, New York City saw Hubbard Street at the Joyce Theater. But as Conte points out, "We wanted New York but we just don't want to lose our shirts. As a nonprofit organization we had to enlist corporate funding. Even if you sell out the house as we did, you have to figure on a $200,000 loss just to go there! That's one of the reasons we didn't, for so long. I love the Joyce but there are only 445 seats. I wanted a bigger house, just for the chemistry between the dancers and the audience. But every other theater we looked into was absolutely cost-prohibitive. So what's the point? Let's just keep going to Peoria!"

Like others in the arts world, Conte and his colleagues are deeply concerned about building audiences, attracting young people, and getting them involved in dance: "Our outreach programs are more and more important to us, as indeed they are to our funders. I had doubts at first but the company enjoys it. Last year we were in St. Louis, and the dancers in groups of three were taken out into the school systems, talked about themselves and Hubbard Street, got some of the students up, and taught them simple movement phrases they could do without training, even if it was only-a-game kind of thing. Then those same kids were bused in to see a performance, and they really related to us. It was inspirational for everyone." Today Hubbard Street is planning more community programs, building on the 17,000 students it serves annually.

At fifty-four, Conte is Hubbard Street: traveling with the company, scouting choreographers--teaching, polishing, perfecting. But what about the future? Will it be e same if a time comes when he's not there? Says Conte, "One of my dancers, Greg Begley, who has since left, married, and raised a family, said to me, `Hubbard Street's going to be just fine. It has a life of its own.' And it's true. You know there's something about this company, and I don't particularly think it comes from me." If it doesn't come from Conte, who would know? Well, perhaps Buddy. But you won't get a woof out of him.