Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s “Impasse” starts with a simple setup: to stage left, a house stands. Its black facade blends into its surroundings, and it is only legible from its minimalistic white outline. When Jacqueline Burnett emerges from its front door, she is limber and expressive, Johan Inger’s choreography a pleasing meld of ballet and modern. There is a sense of yearning or sadness when she sweeps an arm or prances in one direction, her hands held behind her head. This plaintive mood shifts, however, when she finds her way back to the house and a single hand, slipping out from behind the door, caresses her face. The hijinks have begun.

Dancer David Schultz—whose hand reached out to Burnett—joins her on the stage, and eventually Aaron Choate stumbles out of the house as well. It’s clear that there are complications here within the trio’s relationship: the men grow competitive with one another. Choate, with his shirt billowing and unbuttoned, is the Other Man.

With its dynamic and often playful choreography—one sequence of domino-like tumbles inspires laughs from the audience—“Impasse” is a delight that only grows more intoxicating as it goes on. A troupe of dancers dressed in black gradually join the trio, spilling from the house in seductive style. When all of the dancers move in unison as Ibrahim Maalouf’s layered composition crescendos into a mambo section, the result is nothing short of euphoric. After the dancers leave the stage, the trio returns dressed similarly in black.

The set work of “Impasse” is essential  to its narrative: a smaller, yet similar style of house, is placed in front of the original set. The dancers that emerge from this piece have a wholly different tenor. Dressed in various costumes—a clown among them—they contort the piece into a wild, circus-like fantasy.

This choice is, at face value, absurd. But it’s also a level of ridiculousness that the Hubbard Street dancers can pull off with their unmatchable timing and precision. Amid the clownery, there is no loss of technique; the chaos is as much a science as an art. The piece finds its perfect finish only after the buildup of energy threatens to burst. It was out of total enrapture, and not any sense of lack of dissatisfaction, that I was left wanting even more.