Bob Fosse’s ‘Sweet Gwen Suite’ a Hubbard Street Dance Chicago milestone

It’s a Monday afternoon, and a dozen or so Hubbard Street dancers are puzzling over a fresh section of “Sweet Gwen Suite,” co-created by the legendary Broadway choreographer Bob Fosse and his third wife, Gwen Verdon.

The piece is both old and new, equal parts familiar and fresh, with its pelvic thrusts, 60 mph kicks, flexed arms and percussive steps. For a seasoned musical theater fan, the movements might conjure other Fosse creations: “Chicago,” “Pippin” or “Sweet Charity.” But for the TikTok generation, the movements are more likely to recall Beyoncé’s iconic “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” video, which directly draws its steps from Fosse’s repertoire.

Even for a dancer fluent in different styles, like the Juilliard-trained Hubbard Street company member Cyrie Topete, “Sweet Gwen Suite” is a puzzler — akin to patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time.

“It’s fun,” Topete says, catching her breath after a run-through, “but it’s very hard.”

When Hubbard Street performs “Sweet Gwen Suite” during its fall series Nov. 15-24, the show will mark not just a historic moment for the local contemporary dance company, but for Chicago itself. In a turn of events decades in the making, Hubbard Street is the only concert dance company in the world authorized to add a Fosse work — this one — to its repertory.

But the performance is also a homecoming for Fosse himself, though the choreographer died in 1987 at age 60. One of six children of Chicagoans Cy and Sadie Fosse and a grad of Amundsen High School on the city’s North Side, Fosse honed his dance skills in Chicago’s 1940s nightlife scene, where he tap danced in vaudeville shows and burlesque clubs as part of a novelty teen duo called the Riff Brothers.

“He grew up without much money, and he went to regular public high school and played sports,” recalled his daughter, Nicole Fosse, who started the Verdon Fosse Legacy foundation in 2013 to preserve her parents’ dance contributions. “He grew up in a household that was tough, in an era that could be tough. I think he came to understand different aspects and perspectives that people have because of their situations.”

Never classically trained, Fosse instead was schooled in movement by WWII-era performers, clowns, strip tease artists and a tap dance instructor named Charles Weaver who instilled in the teen a love of a comedic, jazz-tinged style of vaudeville. Those Chicago years left an imprint on Fosse, shaping a distinct dance style that took him from Broadway to Hollywood and back again. Only in recent years are some of his contributions to American dance being fully appreciated.

Learning his style

In the Hubbard Street rehearsal room on the fourth floor of Water Tower Place, a lithe group of dancers wear custom, over-the-ankle LaDuca dance boots commissioned just for the Fosse number.

Their eyes lock on choreographer Linda Haberman. Haberman, whose first role in a Fosse musical was “Dancin’” in 1978, has over the years become a trusted steward of his work, closely working with Nicole Fosse’s foundation.

“Sweet Gwen Suite” is a trio of distinct dances that Haberman carefully reconstructed into one work, premiering it at New York City Center in 2021. Fosse and Verdon, his muse, originally created the numbers for 1960s-era segments on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “The Bob Hope Show” — programs that, for dancemakers eager to make their name, were the social media platforms of their age.

Because the works were designed for short bursts on TV, Haberman couldn’t just dust them off and remount them. She fashioned some connective choreography and interlaced the suite with Fosse “Easter eggs” from her own experience and archived videos.

“Because [the Broadway revival of] ‘Chicago’ has run so long, there are these advertising images that have gotten ingrained in people’s minds that that is Fosse,” Haberman said, “but you can’t boil his work down to just one thing. Gwen and Bob both studied flamenco, East Indian dancing, African dancing. Gwen worked with [innovative jazz dancer and Marilyn Monroe choreographer] Jack Cole. Bob grew up in vaudeville, and you see all of these influences.”

For Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell, the artistic director of Hubbard Street and a former longtime principal with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the company’s acquisition of “Sweet Gwen Suite” is an opportunity to underscore Fosse’s contributions to dance and preserve them beyond the ephemeral nature of a Broadway run.

“Bob Fosse’s work has always been valued and recognized by Hubbard Street,” Fisher-Harrell said. As a young dancer trying to get a foothold on Broadway, Hubbard Street founder Lou Conte’s first gig as a chorus dancer was in the musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” which Fosse helped stage in 1961. Conte ultimately would start a dance company, but stay in touch with Fosse and with Verdon. Verdon herself visited Hubbard Street in later decades to set Fosse’s work “Percussion 4” on small groups of dancers.

Fisher-Harrell remembers, as a young performer in Hubbard Street’s company in the 1990s, asking Verdon if she could quietly watch rehearsal. “I had no business staying in the room — that piece is just for the guys,” Fisher-Harrell recalled, “but [Verdon] was open to all of those things; she was so fluid in that thinking, she saw how much I really liked the turns and the jumps. I remember just breathing the ether.”

Both Fisher-Harrell and Nicole Fosse said that history helped open the door for a fresh collaboration between Hubbard Street and the Verdon Fosse Legacy. 

“It’s very precise,” Fisher-Harrell said of the choreography, “and that’s something we do here — our dancers are so precise. Add on to that that our dancers know the weight of Bob Fosse.”   

The Fosse legacy

To Nicole Fosse, the Chicago staging of “Sweet Gwen Suite” is more than a homecoming for her father. The work also honors her mother’s contributions as a dancemaker, and its adoption by a leading American contemporary company helps cement both her parents in the echelon of great choreographers.

“It is a collaborative piece,” said Nicole Fosse. “It’s of huge significance to have it performed by a concert dance company, because they — my mother and father — are now being recognized in a league like Paul Taylor or Alvin Ailey or Jerome Robbins.” That recognition has been a long time coming, and something Nicole Fosse said her foundation has worked more than a decade to realize.

“People would say, Oh, he’s a choreographer, or he’s a Broadway choreographer, or he’s a director,” she said. “Now he’s being established and recognized as a choreographer of, dare I say, more substance than just Broadway.”

In a first for Hubbard Street, the work will be performed across two weekends on the stage of Steppenwolf Theatre Company, which sits just a few miles from the palaces like the old Oak Theatre where Fosse and his dance partner in the Riff Brothers, Charles Grass, got their start.

Venues like that, now demolished, are where a teenage Fosse first stood in the spotlights and heard the thunder of applause — and considered that he could be a star.