{"id":3654,"date":"2015-10-21T12:47:17","date_gmt":"2015-10-21T16:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=3654"},"modified":"2015-10-23T15:38:18","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T19:38:18","slug":"70-years-of-history-brought-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2015\/10\/70-years-of-history-brought-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"70 Years of History Brought to Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n International Dance Festival at the Joyce, October 13-25.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Jos\u00e9<\/a>

Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n’s Mazurkas<\/em>. (L to R: Elise Drew Leon. Kathryn Alter, and Kristen Foote. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n was choreographing right up to the end of his life. His last dances, Orfeo <\/em>and Carlota, <\/em>premiered in 1972, the year of his death at 64. Those two works are included in the Lim\u00f3n Dance Company\u2019s 70th<\/sup> anniversary celebration, now entering its second week at the Joyce Theatre. So is one of his earliest surviving dances: Chaconne <\/em>(1942), a solo for himself set to a selection from J.S. Bach\u2019s Partita No. 2 for Unaccompanied Viol.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>The company\u2019s season is billed as the Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n International Dance Festival, and scattered among its six different programs are other companies, guest dancers, and student groups performing works from the Lim\u00f3n repertory. Some come from as far away as Venezuela and Denmark. Two dancers from the Bayerische Staatsballett were prevented from appearing by U.S. immigration authorities. One group of male students traveled from the University of Arizona at Tucson to dance Lim\u00f3n\u2019s 1970 The Unsung. <\/em>Others learned dances in New York City institutions (Juilliard and NYU\u2019s Tisch School of the Arts). In all, fourteen of his works are represented, many of them staged and coached by former company dancers. A massive accomplishment by the company\u2019s artistic director, Carla Maxwell, and its executive director, Juan Jos\u00e9 Escalante.<\/p>\n

One name listed in the program\u2019s \u201cWho\u2019s Who in the Company\u201d section belongs to one of the great choreographers in the modern dance pantheon and a vital part of the company\u2019s history. Doris Humphrey\u2019s performing career was cut short in the mid-1940s by crippling arthritis, and the company she co-directed with Charles Weidman fell apart. Humphrey had been a mentor to Lim\u00f3n when he was a young dancer in that group, avid to choreograph. The Lim\u00f3n Dance Company made its debut in 1946, with her as an advisor and contributor. Her terrific 1949 Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mej\u00edas<\/em>, a solo for him and two participating women (they spoke lines from Federico Garcia Lorca\u2019s great eponymous poem), celebrated Lim\u00f3n\u2019s fascination with bullfighters\u2014a fascination that in some subtle ways shaped his own style. With his powerful torso and quick-stepping feet, he often appeared to be charging into dance, swerving in avoidance, whipping around in confrontation with his own demons and those of the heroes he played\u2014figures such as Othello, Judas Iscariot, Eugene O\u2019Neill\u2019s Emperor Jones, Julian the Apostate.<\/p>\n

As a choreographer and teacher, he drew on Humphrey\u2019s technique of Fall and Recovery\u2014the breath-caught suspensions that end in a plunge to the floor and rise again, the beautiful, lush curve of the dancing body, as well as its jagged, off-balance moments. Humphrey was a humanist, who also thought in terms of architecture. Lim\u00f3n learned from her how to create choreographic structures that grew, organized, crumbled, and rose again\u2014metaphors for human cooperation, dissent, and harmony. And he understood how these structures could serve dramatic intent.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>

An earlier cast in Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n’s The Moor’s Pavane<\/em>: (Standing, L to R: Carla Maxwell, Carlos Orta, Bradon McDonald; supine: Roxane D’Orleans-Juste.<\/p><\/div>\n

His 1949 The Moor\u2019s Pavane <\/em>is a marvel of a dance set to selections from incidental music written by Henry Purcell (1659-1695) for two plays, The Gordion Knot Untied<\/em> and Abdelazzar, or the Moor\u2019s Revenge<\/em> (Humphrey found the music, and Simon Sadoff arranged it). Many companies have performed it, as well as many unlikely dancers\u2014eg. Rudolf Nureyev and Erik Bruhn squaring off as The Moor and His Friend (Lim\u00f3n avoided using the names Shakespeare gave the characters in his Othello<\/em>, perhaps to make them more universal).<\/p>\n

Lim\u00f3n once wrote that he worked on the idea for three years. That shows. Since Shakespeare\u2019s tragedy consists almost entirely of two-character scenes, Lim\u00f3n pared his cast down to four dancers and used the stately pavane<\/em> form to indicate passion restrained by public courtesy, as well as the interdependence of Shakespeare\u2019s Othello; his wife, Desdemona; his military subordinate, Iago; and Iago\u2019s wife Emilia, who is Desdemona\u2019s servant. The meet and bow, retreat, and join in a revolving circle that you can imagine as the wheel of fate. Treachery and jealousy disrupt that balance. You know the tragic result.<\/p>\n

\"Jos\u00e9<\/a>

Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n and Betty Jones in the final moments of The Moor’s Pavane<\/em>. Photo: Barrat<\/p><\/div>\n

The opening night performance of the work (finely directed by Maxwell) could move you to tears\u2014so nuanced, so somehow real<\/em> the performances. Francisco Ruvalcaba has danced the role of the Moor for some time now, and in a theater the size of the Joyce, he conveys with magnificent subtlety his unwillingness to believe that his beloved wife has been unfaithful, his growing suspicion, and his fatal rage\u2014first at Iago, then at Desdemona. Durell Comedy has the lean, almost serpentine wiliness that its originator, Lucas Hoving, brought to the role of Iago, the supposed friend. Comedy is a charismatic performer and excellent dancer (and certainly proved that in spades in his solo as Eros in Lim\u00f3n\u2019s The Winged<\/em>), but occasionally in The Moor\u2019s Pavane<\/em>\u2014mostly in the small transitional steps\u2014he loses a little of his knife-sharp accuracy.<\/p>\n

Logan Kruger\u2019s lovely Desdemona is both innocent and eager to please; were she to speak, she would be asking many times, \u201cWhat does my dear lord wish of me?\u201d In the second-night cast, the company\u2019s associate artistic director, Roxane D\u2019Orleans-Juste, is gentle and questioning in the role, but less na\u00efve. Lim\u00f3n conceived the misguided Emilia as a sensual woman, and both Kathryn Alter and Kristen Foote bring that out excellently. In a way, Emilia is the most complex of the four. She loves her mistress, but craves the favor of her husband. He\u2019d like her to steal the handkerchief that Othello gave to Desdemona? No problem, and no questions asked. But when that talismanic handkerchief leads to Othello\u2019s jealous rage and Desdemona\u2019s murder, the dancer playing Emilia has to show both her dawning realization of her own complicity and her resultant fury and grief.<\/p>\n

On opening night, The Moor\u2019s Pavane<\/em> was bookended by two works choreographed in 1958. Missa Brevis<\/em> premiered in April and Mazurkas <\/em>in August. Both grew out of Limon\u2019s profound experience of Poland (then behind the \u201cIron Curtain\u201d), acquired when his company performed in Poznan, Wroclaw, Katowice, and Warsaw on a 1957 European tour sponsored by the U.S, State Department. He saw populations still struggling to rebuild cities destroyed in the bombing raids of World War II. Of the citizens he met, he wrote, \u201cThere was no rancor, no bitterness. Only a tremendous resolution, a sense of the future. . . .I am in awe of these brave people.\u201d The music of the same name by Zoltan Kod\u00e1ly is said to have received its premiere in the basement of Budapest\u2019s battered Opera House.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The opening image of Missa Brevis<\/em>. Photo: Scott Groller<\/p><\/div>\n

A Catholic Mass in time of war had to be brief. The score, with its thundering organ chords and voices lifted in prayer, lasts around a half hour. It was Lim\u00f3n\u2019s first major work for an augmented company (I was among the members of Juilliard Dance Theater who took part in the process and the first performances). Anyone seeing it now might think that Lim\u00f3n had planned to be an architect rather than a painter. In the \u201cIntroitus,\u201d three women are lifted, one after the other, above the huddled crowd by unseen hands; they stand straight and motionless, their arms by their sides. It\u2019s as if beams are being raised by community effort. At another point, pairs of men run, holding women overhead in flying positions, like homemade angels. The circling chains of men and women, their clasped hands held high, build images of steeples and windows. When dancers swing one leg to pull them into half turns, you think of tolling bells. But Lim\u00f3n doesn\u2019t present religious images as distant holy visions. When a woman (the eloquent D\u2019Orleans Juste) emerges from the crowd to dance the \u201cCrucifixus,\u201d her bunched-together fingers stab her own body and her hands are laid across her chest when men lift her high and carry her away.<\/p>\n

Ruvalcaba plays the role Lim\u00f3n crafted for himself: the outsider, the agnostic, struggling with his own feelings, drawn in spite of himself into this dauntless community. In the beautiful \u201cBenedictus,\u201d he dances with two women (D\u2019Orleans Juste and Foote), both supporting them and dancing close between them\u2014one with them.<\/p>\n

The exulting crowd forms and disperses, creating patterns and erasing them; out of these, three may emerge to dance together or a soloist be left to a private utterance that draws others in. The \u201cHosanna\u201d begins and ends with a woman (Alter) alone. (The original background image of s skeletal church would not work at the Joyce, but I also regret an oddly timed fade-out in the otherwise excellent lighting by Steve Woods, executed by Lauren Libretti. I have a memory of Betty Jones in 1958 and the light diminishing until for a few last seconds, a pin spot suspended her glowing face in darkness.)<\/p>\n

\"Jos\u00e9<\/a>

Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n’s Mazurkas<\/em>: Francisco Ruvalcaba and Kathryn Alter. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

Mazurkas<\/em>, the program\u2019s opener, celebrated Lim\u00f3n\u2019s Polish experience in a blither way. While Michael Cherry plays Chopin mazurkas on the piano, seven white-clad dancers come together to celebrate being in that place and moving to music in a sprightly, often vigorous 3\/4 meter. Once or twice, the pianist plays the lilting melodies with no dancers in sight and only the cyclorama suggesting a sunlit sky or one at dusk. Sarah Stackhouse staged and directed the revival of the sweet-natured, but vigorous work. Trios or dancers promenade arm-in-arm, meet and greet, separate into couples. I\u2019m especially fond of the playful duet danced by Elise Drew Leon and Aaron Selissen. In one solo, Comedy claps his hands and stamps his feet with fervor. Ruvalcaba, in another solo, dances full of thought, twisting as if to gaze at different spots on the ground.<\/p>\n

Doris Humphrey died of cancer at the end of 1958, and Lim\u00f3n was on his own. Among the works he made after this, were ones for larger groups, taking advantage of students in the Juilliard School where he taught and also ones that he created for members of his own company, as if fascinated by their individual qualities. The Unsung<\/em> (1970) featured the men in his company. For them he created eight solos in honor of a pantheon of \u201cdefenders of the American patrimony;\u201d the first was Metacomet, the last Geronimo (only seven could be performed at the Joyce because of a last-minute injury to Selissen).<\/p>\n

\"Jos\u00e9<\/a>

Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n’s The Unsung<\/em>. (L to R): Ruka Hatua Saar, David Glista, Ross Katen, Durell Comedy, Victor Gonzalez, and Mark Willis. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

The dance is performed without musical accompaniment, but the solos and the group passages that begin and end the piece and engineer transitions between the solos use the floor as a drum. The men\u2019s feet strike the floor or brush against it. Frequently they step out on one deeply bent leg and smack the ground behind them with the arched foot of the other leg. You feel the push that sends them into the air as a silence, their fall from a balance as a soft percussive beat. That their spread fingers held above their heads at times to hint at feathered headdresses doesn\u2019t seem corny or pictorial, and the dancing celebrates not only the Native American chiefs named, but the men for whom the solos were created and the men who dance them now. You can be impressed by the arching spine of Mark Willis or the bent over spins with wheeling arms that Kurt Douglas sends around the stage. Ross Katen\u2019s comparative serenity contrasts with Comedy\u2019s big side-to-side tilts. Three of the soloists in the cast of nine are members of the Royal Danish Ballet, so you can can also admire Charles Anderson\u2019s slide into a near-split, Gregory Dean\u2019s handstands and back somersaults, and Gabor Baumbach\u2019s deep lunges. Among the many other imaginative passages of dancing, performed by all with dedication.<\/p>\n

\"Mark<\/a>

Mark Willis in The Unsung<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

When I first saw The Winged<\/em> in 1965, it, too, was danced mostly in silence, with only fragments of incidental music by Hank Johnson. It\u2019s said that Lim\u00f3n wasn\u2019t satisfied with that; when Maxwell set the piece on Juilliard students in 1995, a score was commissioned from Jon Magnussen,. The music is imaginative, sometimes cacophonous, full of voices that can sound like wind or birds\u2019 cries or human muttering. It\u2019s distractingly rich at time. Still, Lim\u00f3n\u2019s piece is rich too. Humphrey might have urged condensation, but you can sense the choreographer drunk with possibilities\u2014urging his splendid dancers into variegated images of flight and other aspects of life among the winged, including those from Greek myth. They appear in squads, rushing onto the sky of the stage and off it, one group circling another. There\u2019s a loving \u201cNuptial Flight, admirably danced by Elise Drew Leon and Ruka Hatua-Saar. Hatua-Saar and Comedy duel by slashing and rippling the air between them; they have to be separated by others. Seven women as ferocious Harpies feed on their own lifted legs. The splendid Foote appears as a powerful, stony Sphinx, succeeded by Douglas as Pegasus in a stunning piece of choreography. Sometimes I forget how imaginative Lim\u00f3n could be with movement without deviating from the essential heroic nature of his style.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite images in The Winged<\/em>\u2019s ten sections occur in two moments when the main action onstage is framed by men\u2019s heads\u2014only their heads\u2014 protruding at floor level from behind the side curtains to gaze at the goings-on. I have no idea what Lim\u00f3n had in mind. And I quite like not knowing.<\/p>\n

I regret not seeing more of this celebration of a major 20th<\/sup>-century choreographer\u2019s work. Maxwell, who may retire soon as artistic director has guided the company since 1978, making a number of astute choices in terms of acquiring works by other choreographers that fit gracefully into the Lim\u00f3n repertory. However, it\u2019s splendid for New Yorkers to be able to revisit so many works by the master himself, sensitively coached and fitted to dancers of various nationalities and ages.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s cavalier and, to my mind, incorrect to speak of Lim\u00f3n\u2019s works as dated. To be sure, they belong to a certain period of time in dance history, but they deal with timeless topics, and the best of them do that with passion, craft, and wisdom about the human condition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n International Dance Festival at the Joyce, October 13-25. Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n was choreographing right up to the end of his life. His last dances, Orfeo and Carlota, premiered in 1972, the year of his death at 64. Those two works are included in the Lim\u00f3n Dance Company\u2019s 70th anniversary celebration, now entering its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[275],"tags":[362,1746,1743,359,1457,1744,1745,1166],"class_list":{"0":"post-3654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-classic-modern-dance","8":"tag-carla-maxwell","9":"tag-durell-comedy","10":"tag-francisco-ruvalcaba","11":"tag-jose-limon","12":"tag-jose-limon-dance-company","13":"tag-kathryn-alter","14":"tag-kristen-foote","15":"tag-roxane-dorleans-juste","16":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3654"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3678,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654\/revisions\/3678"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}