Hubbard Street goes for the silver. (News).

Chicago is a city that prides itself on the grassroots histories of its performing-arts institutions. Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the ensemble that began life in a church basement in the 1970s and nurtured such actors as John Malkovich and Joan Allen, is one local legend. Another is Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the internationally known contemporary troupe that began life when a group of four women, under the direction of dancer-choreographer-teacher Lou Conte, got together for a series of performances at senior citizens' centers during the summer of 1977.

At that time, Chicago was a city with a negligible dance scene (this was well before The Joffrey Ballet relocated here or the huge groundswell in contemporary dance began), and Hubbard Street captured the hearts of local audiences.

"I really had no grand plan to start a company," Conte said recently. "I just wanted to provide work for some very good dancers." Yet by the summer of 2000, when he retired as artistic director of the troupe he founded, Hubbard Street had a roster of more than twenty dancers and a repertoire that included works by Nacho Duato, Jiri Kylian, Trey McIntyre, Ohad Naharin, and Daniel Ezralow. It had a second company, Hubbard Street 2, with its own repertoire and very promising dancers. It had a busy school (which Conte continues to operate). It had a budget of more than $5 million; a newly opened, state-of-the-art studio complex in an increasingly hot downtown neighborhood; a top-notch staff and board; and a file of strong reviews from Berlin, New York, and beyond.

Conte handed over this prize package to Jim Vincent, a New Jersey-born dancer, ballet master, and choreographer who had spent most of his dance life in Europe, where he had performed for twelve years with Kylian's Nederlands Dans Theater and later served as part of the creative team at Disneyland Paris.

Vincent clearly recognizes the company's careful evolution under Conte. "Lou's relatively early strategic plan to shift from a company that performed his and other local choreographers' jazz-influenced work to a real repertory company was crucial," said Vincent. "And with that decision, all the other elements necessary to keeping the company growing fell into place--whether it was the board, which was a guiding force in the company's development, or the startup of the second company, or the expansion of education programs."

The change in repertoire was gradual, as such diverse talents as Margo Sappington, Lynne Taylor-Corbett, David Parsons, and Richard Levi challenged the dancers. Then, in a crucial development in the early 1990s, Twyla Tharp set five of her works on the company, making the troupe a sort of unofficial repository of her work for five years. This not only raised the bar in terms of technical prowess but required the dancers to morph into a very different style.

They passed the test. And it was this chameleon-like quality that also allowed the company to move into the more balletic styles of Duato and Kylian, as well as the highly dramatic works of Naharin, and the more playful but no less difficult works of Chicago choreographer Harrison McEldowney. Over a period of two decades, a company whose signature piece had once been Conte's The 40s, a lighthearted, flashy Broadway-style homage to the big-band era, suddenly became best known for its performance of Minus 16, Naharin's brilliant collage of Hasidic-inflected madness, cha-cha nonsense, and self-revelation.

Vincent's plan now is to entice some of the high-profile choreographers who have set already existing works on the company to think about creating original pieces for the group. He wants to build the repertoire with as many as four or five new works each year, he says, "works that are exclusive to our company and that tap the talents of promising younger choreographers as well as established masters." And he has already begun implementing this plan through a variety of joint commissions.

The company now boasts a sophisticated roster of dancers from throughout the United States, as well as Canada, Italy, Spain, and Israel, with Wisconsin-born Lucas Crandall (like Vincent, a longtime expatriate in Europe) serving as artistic associate.

Hubbard Street kicks off its twenty-fifth-anniversary celebrations with a three-week engagement at Chicago's ornate Ford Center for the Performing Arts' Oriental Theater, March 25 to April 13. Three different programs--"International Masters," "All-American Favorites," and "Passionate & Provocative"--will feature revivals of many favorite early repertoire works, as well as a trio of company premieres, including Kylian's 1988 No More Play, Duato's duet, Cor Perdut (Lost Heart), and Crandall's L'Atelier, inspired by the sculptor Auguste Rodin.

They will dance at New York's Joyce Theater May 28-June 8.