Fans of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago know that Minus 16, a company signature work choreographed by Israeli artist Ohad Naharin, plays havoc with the boundaries traditionally respected inside a theater. The work is being revived this season (it was last seen in Chicago in spring 2006), and it is a delight. The piece actually starts before the lights go down, and it ends—well, the ending is pretty special. Read on.

“I [normally] hate performances that engage the audience,” says Isabel Stewart, retired head of the Chicago Foundation for Women. Nonetheless, she looks back fondly on the experience of being coaxed out of her seat for the final section of Minus 16 during a Hubbard Street Dance performance a couple of years ago.

When Stewart saw the performers coming down from the stage toward the public, “I started purposely looking down, fiddling in my pocketbook. I thought I’d fiddled long enough,” she says. “Then suddenly I was looking into the eyes of a young man who had his finger crooked at me. You can’t say no!” She followed him down the aisle, joining couples formed of audience members and performers that were populating the stage.

“I made a beeline to the back of the group,” she recalls. The young man engaged her in social dancing. “The music was lovely and fun, a cha-cha or mambo—and since I’m so old, I know how to do those dances,” she jokes.

Stewart found herself having a ball and was so caught up in enjoying herself that she was completely taken aback when her partner suddenly fell down. Turns out, it was part of the choreography, and Stewart was the “last one standing,” a scene that closes the dance.

“I got a standing ovation from my husband of 43 years,” she says. “Outside on Michigan Avenue after the performance, people I didn’t even know said ‘Good job!’ or hollered ‘Woo-hoo!’ I felt like I was the star of the show.”

HSDC performs Minus 16 and other works at the Harris starting Thursday 9.