{"id":5069,"date":"2017-05-07T11:50:58","date_gmt":"2017-05-07T15:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=5069"},"modified":"2017-05-07T14:12:20","modified_gmt":"2017-05-07T18:12:20","slug":"pushing-the-past-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2017\/05\/pushing-the-past-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Pushing the Past Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Lim\u00f3n Dance Company performs at the Joyce Theater, May 2 through 7.<\/p>\n

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Members of the Lim\u00f3n Dance Company (L to R): Elise Drew Leon, Jesse Obremski, and Kathryn Alter in Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n’s Concerto Grosso<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n might have been a fine architect had he chosen that profession instead of dance. Beginning his career in the company led by Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, he inherited some of their principles of movement and, shortly, a mentor: Humphrey herself. And during the latter part of his career, when he had a large company to work with, he created moving walls and tides and chains of dancers.<\/p>\n

During its season at the Joyce, the Lim\u00f3n Dance Company, directed since last July by onetime company member Colin Connor, showed the lyrical aspect of Lim\u00f3n\u2019s work, a well as the architectural and the dramatic\u2014contrasting these with Connor\u2019s own Corvidae<\/em> and Kate Weare\u2019s Night Light. <\/em><\/p>\n

Lim\u00f3n choreographed Concerto Grosso <\/em>in 1945. There was no room for a large ensemble in Humphrey and Weidman\u2019s studio theater on 16th<\/sup> Street, and only three dancers were needed for the work he set to Antonio Vivaldi\u2019s Concerto #11 in D minor. Humphrey based her style on a fact-of-life duality: falling and recovering\u2014not always literally falling to the ground, but aware of the pull of gravity, even when not compliant with it. The dancers step out into a movement and suspend it a second before falling into the next step. You can absorb this as exaltation or a teasing delay of the inevitable.<\/p>\n

At the Joyce performance that I saw, Kathryn Alter, Elise Drew Leon, and Jesse Obremski performed with precision and spirit a production of Concerto Grosso<\/em> staged and directed by Risa Steinberg. It\u2019s a formal trio, an elegant but carefree playground; the three often dance in unison, facing the audience, but the man has two partners to relate to\u2014ready to help them up if they\u2019ve swirled to the ground. (For me, the pleasures of the choreography were somewhat compromised by the extremely high volume at which the recorded music was played).<\/p>\n

The architectural skills that Humphrey may have fostered in Lim\u00f3n are evident in a suite drawn from his long, rich A Choreographic Offering <\/em>(set to J.S. Bach\u2019s A Musical Offering<\/em> and staged and directed by Kurt Douglas). Humphrey died of cancer in December 1958, and Lim\u00f3n constructed this dance as a memorial in 1964, drawing on sequences from her dances. It\u2019s as if he had unrolled a long carpet of changing designs. The performers rush into group patterns and out again, exhilarated; they find partners; they wander dreamily; they pause, balanced on one leg; they fall to the floor and rise again. And, lord, how they fly! That is, leap, hop, skip, jump and perform many variations of these, countered by suspended turns. A trio for three men (Obremski, Ross Katen, and David Glista) opens the work. Obremski and Drew Leon lead the second section, and Alter and Katen perform an allegro duet with wonderful wit and pleasure in each other\u2019s company.<\/p>\n

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Mark Willis and Kristen Foote in Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n’s The Exiles<\/em>. Photo: K Chang<\/p><\/div>\n

The Exiles <\/em>(1950), staged and directed by Connor, is another matter: a duet for Adam and Eve (or any pair with similar challenges). Kristen Foote and Mark Willis give whole-hearted, dramatic performances. Lim\u00f3n chose the moment just after the pair are driven from the Garden of Eden and must cope with a new world. He set his work to Arnold Schoenberg\u2019s Chamber Symphony No. 2, Opus 38, and we hear a stretch of it before the curtain rises. The unfortunate two run in, their arms around each other\u2014as closely linked as they are in Renaissance paintings of the post-apple-eating crisis. Their unitards (designed by Lim\u00f3n\u2019s wife Pauline Lawrence) match their skin color so exactly that they appear almost naked. Shame plays a large part in this Christian vision. The two often crouch over, wrapping their arms around themselves to hide the private parts they used not to notice. But this is a dance of discovery. The earth is not so bad after all.<\/p>\n

Lim\u00f3n had some ingenious ideas. They discover slender blue ribbons lying on the ground, and with adroit twists and turns present themselves as \u201cclothed\u201d even though their bodies are still fully visible. They come together in awkwardly tender ways. Willis hinges backward at the knees, catching his weight on his hands; Foote falls back across him, then kneels on his thighs.<\/p>\n

But when the music changes, and the backcloth glows blue (everything looks better the next day), they cast off the ribbons and become playful. They still look up at times or cringe, but she also dives onto him and convulses. They swing their legs in opposite directions; which way to go? They exit taking big steps sideways\u2014now looking back at what they lost, now looking toward the life that lies ahead.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t able to attend one of the performances at which The Exiles<\/em> was performed in different costumes by Chris Hynds, with new lighting by Christopher Chambers, and a new score by Aleksandra Vrebalov that involves six singers. Any questions I might have about the rationale for this new version remain, for the time being, hovering in my mind.<\/p>\n

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Colin Connor’s Corvidae<\/em> (members of both casts). Lim\u00f3n dancers (L to R): Kathryn Alter, Kristen Foote (mostly hidden), Logan Frances Kruger, Ross Katen (partly hidden), David Glista, Jesse Obremski (partly hidden), Bradley Beakes, Alex McBride. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n

Connor\u2019s Corvidae<\/em> (2016) is set to the first movement of Philip Glass\u2019s Violin Concerto #1, although it starts in silence, with the six black-clad dancers entering gradually, beginning with Glista. The title refers to the family that includes ravens, crows, and blue jays\u2014smart, loudmouthed fellows and, in the case of some of them, fond of gatherings. Clad in diverse black outfits, Bradley Beakes, Leon Cobb, Logan Frances Kruger, Glista, Katen, and Savannah Spratt flock, rush about, and pause to check the territory. A group may gain followers as it travels. Individuals (Cobb for one) are briefly foregrounded, then enter the group or are absorbed by it. These people are tough\u2014sometimes suspicious, sometimes wary. One compositional strategy would have been foreign to Lim\u00f3n: Near the beginning of Corvidae<\/em>, they scatter into a very loose canon, foraging individually; your eyes can\u2019t absorb them in an orderly fashion, just as you might view a murmuration of starlings.<\/p>\n

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Logan Frances Kruger and Leon Cobb in Kate Weare’s Night Light.<\/em> Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019m sorry I missed seeing Kate Weare\u2019s Night Light<\/em> when second-year Juilliard students premiered it during the dance department\u2019s New Dances: Edition 2014. There were probably more dancers than the dozen than the Lim\u00f3n company can muster. It\u2019s fascinating nevertheless. The two selections of music have more in common than you\u2019d think, considering that they were composed over three hundred years apart. \u201cA Song for Mick Kelly\u201d from Victoire\u2019s 2010 album, Cathedral City<\/em>, and the Passacaglia for unaccompanied violin that ends Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber\u2019s The Rosary Sonatas <\/em>link through the implications of the their titles, as well as by the prominence of a solo violin in part of the former.<\/p>\n

The fine lighting, designed by Clifton Taylor and executed by Chambers, and the costumes by Fritz Masten heighten the atmosphere that Weare has created. Men and women alike wear short, long-sleeved, very full shirts in shades of blue. When they spin\u2014and they do a lot of spinning\u2014the outfits flare out around them. After a while, some of them appear without the shirts, wearing only black trunks (plus bras for the women). The casting off of garments has some significance I can\u2019t understand for sure.<\/p>\n

This resonant work, too, makes me think of architecture at times, but of a structure that is only intermittently stable. One of many things that interest me about it is the undercurrent of aggressive force that seems to be accepted. Kruger and Cobb enter from opposite sides of the stage, meet, and explode. She recoils, as if pushed, yet leans in to lay her head briefly against his chest and then cover his mouth with her hand. The others, often forming lines\u2014single ones either side of the stage, doubled on one side, or along diagonals\u2014also reprise that image of people pushing or being pushed from the group. It\u2019s as if this society can\u2019t at times exceed a given head count.<\/p>\n

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Jesse Obremski (L) and Mark Willis of the Lim\u00f3n Dance Company in Kate Weare’s Night Light<\/em>. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n

At one point, you can hear voices, buried in grinding sounds, attempting to surge up. The dancers jump as if coming down heavily were their task. Then silence, and the music turns soft and hoarse. There are strange, temperamental movements here and there: people open their mouths and partly cover them with their fingers; they shiver; two of them appear to lift their partners by the scruff of the neck. When not dancing, they sometimes stand and watch others. There\u2019s a fierce struggle between Obremski and\u00a0 Beakes. And when I say \u201cdancing,\u201d only occasionally do I mean staying put and moving in complex ways. The dancers often rush past, hunkered down over their space-covering steps. I begin to think of them as a community dealing with its members\u2019 individual outbursts, their joint plans, and their reporting for duty. But mystery is a part of it. What is that \u201cnight light?\u201d Does it shine down on them, or make their path difficult to see?<\/p>\n

The Lim\u00f3n company dancers look terrific, committed to making accuracy seem like a full-bodied necessity of life.<\/p>\n

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The Lim\u00f3n Dance Company performs at the Joyce Theater, May 2 through 7. Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n might have been a fine architect had he chosen that profession instead of dance. Beginning his career in the company led by Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, he inherited some of their principles of movement and, shortly, a mentor: Humphrey […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5070,"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":[275,109],"tags":[2695,1938,2700,2693,2696,2694,1409,239,1744,1745,2690,2699,2691,2697,2692,2698],"class_list":{"0":"post-5069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-classic-modern-dance","8":"category-contemporary-dance","9":"tag-alex-mcbride","10":"tag-bradley-beakes","11":"tag-colin-connor","12":"tag-david-glista","13":"tag-elise-drew-leon","14":"tag-jesse-obremski","15":"tag-joyce-theater","16":"tag-kate-weare","17":"tag-kathryn-alter","18":"tag-kristen-foote","19":"tag-leon-cobb","20":"tag-limon-dance-company","21":"tag-logan-frances-kruger","22":"tag-mark-willis","23":"tag-ross-katen","24":"tag-savannah-spratt","25":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5069","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=5069"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5079,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5069\/revisions\/5079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}