AGE: 30
OCCUPATION: modern dancer
HOMETOWN: Madrid, Spain
LIVES IN: West Loop

As a company member and resident choreographer with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Alejandro Cerrudo keeps his slim, wiry body on the move eight hours a day. Does he give much thought to pumping iron or counting calories? “Not me, not at all,” he says. “Sometimes I think I should be eating even more.” Dance is a career for the young, and at 30, Cerrudo says, “it’s starting to hurt—but who knows, I could be doing it for two more years or ten more years.” Meanwhile, he’s increasingly turning his focus to choreography. Hubbard Street will premiere a new, as yet unnamed Cerrudo piece as part of a collaborative performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in April. But whether he’s dancing a part or teaching it, he says, “there’s a kind of freedom that I cannot find with any other form of artistic expression. Every day I feel different.”

 

 

 

Photograph: Maria Ponce