Anata Project Spring Season: Revealing

Photo: Claudia Hubiak

Anata Project Spring Season: Revealing:

It's not just secrets that are revealed in Claudia Anata Hubiak's newest work, "The Hush Hush Chronicles," which the 2-year old Anata Project premieres Friday at Z Space, on a shared program with New York-based Summation Dance Company.

"I am playing with the idea of secrets, of holding information and what that does to us, the pathways it carves in our bodies, the memories it forms and the pressure it causes," says the outgoing Hubiak, a former champion gymnast, who discovered dance when she was 18.

"It was a total switch for me," she says wryly. "I was 17 when I finished doing gymnastics. I was the Colorado state champion, but the older I got and the more I did it, the more terrifying it was for me. The only part that was joyful for me was the dance element, so I kept following that. I decided to study ballet and jazz, and somehow, by magic, I got into the dance department at UC Santa Barbara."

As a rehearsal in SoMa's LEVYstudio gets under way, it's hard not to see the kinesthesia of the competitive athlete in her movement. Hubiak demonstrates a move with a fluid spiral that takes her from the floor onto her feet and back to the floor again in swift, fearless strokes. A trio of dancers interlocks, limb sliding against limb. There's always something moving, she tells the dancers.

"For a long time I think my choreography was very strong and angular and athletic, and I love that element of it," she says, "but over the years I've tried to dissolve and break that down so it's not the dominating factor. Definitely the gymnastics has factored in, but also I grew up in a Buddhist household, so the mindfulness and kinesthetic awareness through meditation has influenced my work a lot."

Nevertheless, it's the darker side of life, the furtive moments hidden in corners of basement speakeasies, that interests Hubiak in "The Hush Hush Chronicles," which will be performed to live music by indie folk group We Became Owls.

And is Hubiak pro-secrets?

"No, I'm not," she says with a self-conscious laugh. "I'm trying to learn how to hold more secrets, actually. Not that I necessarily spill other people's secrets, but I don't hold my own very well. They come out pretty easily."