On February 4, after a yearlong search, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago announced the appointment of Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell to the role of artistic director. A native of Baltimore, Fisher-Harrell began dancing at the age of 14. “My generation as a teenager was MTV. Michael Jackson was in his Thriller heyday. Beat It came out, Billie Jean. Solid Gold was on TV—Fame—Flashdance. I was surrounded by dance in popular culture in a really tangible way that was linked to adolescence. I had never danced when I was a child. I ran track, I played baseball, touch football—anything that you would see a boy doing, I wanted to do it. But with dance being in the forefront of pop culture, I thought, ‘I want to do that. I want to be in a Michael Jackson video!’ I had heard of a performing arts high school like Fame—we had one here in Baltimore. It was like, ‘No way, we got a Fame school? Ma, I’m going!’”
Under Conte’s direction, Fisher-Harrell cultivated the discipline that characterizes HSDC to this day. “He was tough, tough, tough! Tough is an understatement! I thank God I had my professional start where the standards were so high—not just what happened onstage, but how we took class and how we rehearsed, and how we rehearsed everything full out, and how we went to every venue and did a full-out rehearsal and a full-out show. That was my work ethic as I knew it, for my entire dance career. Just be excellent. Just do the whole thing full-out, and there’ll be no surprises when the curtain goes up.”
“I have a deep appreciation of our differences of learning,” she says. “I can’t wait to work with the Hubbard Street dancers to see what kind of learners they are, how they digest and process information, and how it comes out on stage in front of an audience. I think it’s going to help me become a little more understanding as an artistic director and help me to lead a dancer to where they need to be.”
