CHICAGO-STYLE PIZAZZ : Hubbard Street Dance Is Clearly From a Town Made for More Than Toddlin’

Make that Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, please.

Tired of people assuming that the company had to be from New York because all important American dance comes from the Big Apple, don’tcha know, founding director Lou Conte changed the name in November to stress the troupe’s Windy City origins.

That was only the latest change.

The group began in 1979 as Hubbard Street Dance Co., with four women tap-dancing in cafeterias for senior citizens. The company took its name from the location of its first studio.

Over time, more dancers were added, and the budget grew to more than $1 million, drawing on support from Midwest audiences.

Today, the 17-member company dances in sold-out houses all over the United States and Europe. Its repertoire of 45 works includes ballets and modern and jazz dances.

In a three-day engagement at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, the 17-member company will dance Twyla Tharp’s “Baker’s Dozen” (music by jazz great Willie (the Lion) Smith), Margo Sappington’s “Cobras in the Moonlight” (music by Astor Piazzola) and two works by Daniel Ezralow: “Read My Hips” (Michel Colombier) and “Super Straight is coming down” (Tom Willems).

The company acquired Tharp repertory in a much-publicized and very expensive coup in 1990. It was the first time that the premiere avant-garde choreographer worked with a modern dance company since disbanding her own troupe and signing on for a few years as artistic associate with New York-based American Ballet Theatre.

The Chicagoans paid about $300,000 for the rights to perform three Tharp pieces for three years. The works were “The Fugue” (1970), “Sue’s Leg” (1975) and “Baker’s Dozen” (1979).

Another Tharp work--”The Golden Section” from “The Catherine Wheel”--was added last year.

Other than purloined videotapes or the commercial recording available of “The Catherine Wheel,” the only way to see this early Tharp repertory now is go to Hubbard Street programs.

“Baker’s Dozen” is an ensemble piece with six main couples. It exemplifies the Tharpian eclectic movement style that embodies high-energy, throw-away virtuosity and steps from ballet, modern and jazz dance, as well as other dance styles.

Sappington’s work, undoubtedly inspired by the hit “Tango Argentino,” is set to four tangos by Piazzola. It attempts to reverse male-female stereotypes, which may represent some kind of advance for Tharp. Sappington is best remembered for the nude choreography in “Oh! Calcutta!”

Ezralow was a member of Pilobolus and Momix, and his works can be brutal and painful.

“Read My Hips,” for instance, is an assault on the cult of the body-beautiful. “Super Straight,” with its industrial-noise score, pounds away at urban alienation and the breakdown of a group of friends.

The variety is typical Hubbard.