At a latest open rehearsal for the Limón Dance Firm’s upcoming performances at The Joyce Theater, inventive director Dante Puleio advised Observer that he “wished to zero in on José’s perspective as an outsider, and his perception within the energy and the hope inside neighborhood.” Puleio is the Firm’s sixth inventive director because it was based in 1946 by José Limón (1908-1972) and Doris Humphrey (1895-1958), and he takes nice care to honor the founders’ legacy and repertory. He usually refers to Limón’s memoir and private journals and thinks deeply about how you can join the American Fashionable Dance pioneer’s life and work with up to date audiences.
At the back of José Limón: An Unfinished Memoir is an inventory of all of Limón’s works. Puleio observed one there—Scherzo—which he’d seen pictures of however knew little about. One thing about it him sufficient that he went looking and located “this little gem hidden deep within the archives.” Collectively, Puleio and affiliate inventive director Logan Frances Kruger started researching and unearthed what’s going to little question be a spotlight of the Firm’s seventy-eighth season.
Scherzo started as a category train—a examine in motion and rhythm for Limón’s college students at Juilliard. It was then developed right into a light-hearted piece for the American Dance Pageant and was first carried out to a percussive rating by Hazel Johnson in August of 1955. Puleio discovered a fuzzy black and white recording of this efficiency, in addition to one from the Firm’s former inventive director Carla Maxwell’s 1980 reconstruction. The piece was solely ever carried out a couple of occasions and has not been seen on stage in forty-five years.
The quartet, which Puleio described to Observer as “a lot enjoyable,” was precisely what he and his firm and the season wanted. It will lighten the temper “regardless of every little thing that’s occurring on this planet, and produce slightly pleasure.” And although the choreography is technically fairly tough, he knew his present dancers had been rhythmically robust and will pull it off. “The dancers have this playful, youthful power about them that for me, this piece actually inhabited. It was like 4 youngsters enjoying within the yard, banging on a rubbish can.”
The reconstruction course of was joyful, too, and really collaborative. The complete forged helped Puleio and Kruger put the piece again collectively, watching the movies many times, making an attempt issues out, and providing their solutions. “It turned what I think about processes with José would have been like,” Puleio stated. He defined that Limón would usually set the work he wished to set however then ask the dancers for enter “to offer them the company so the piece might stay inside them.” The forged spent every week collectively at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, “actually saturated, simply us doing this actually cool undertaking collectively. It was nice bonding time.”
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Surrounding the reconstructed Scherzo is a various and thoughtfully curated lineup of dances. Opening this system is The Traitor (1954), Limón’s retelling of Gethsemane from Judas’s perspective. This piece for eight male dancers, set to a dramatic musical rating by Gunther Schuller, was made in response to the McCarthy hearings and is thought to be one in every of Limón’s best works. This would be the first time The Traitor is being carried out by a mixed-gender forged.
Scherzo is up subsequent, adopted by the World Premiere of Bessie award-winning choreographer Kayla Farrish’s The Quake That Held Them All (2024). The brand new ensemble work, commissioned by the Firm, is a reimagining of two of Limón’s misplaced works—Redes (Nets) (1951) and El Grito (The Scream) (1952)—set to a propulsive musical rating by Alex MacKinnon.
Subsequent is Humphrey’s masterful solo, Two Ecstatic Themes (1931), right here carried out to stay piano. The work is brief, summary and beautiful. It explores contrasting actions: round and pointed, tender and aggressive, descending and ascending.
Closing out this system is Limón’s masterwork Missa Brevis (1958). The piece was impressed by Limón’s journey to Poland after World Struggle II. He witnessed the good devastation the warfare had brought about there however was moved by how the folks had been rebuilding their cities and lives with hope for the long run. The 2024 reconstruction options gender-neutral casting and an uncovered, uncooked stage. It’s set to a remastered recording of Zoltan Kodály’s “Missa Brevis en Tempore Belli” (“Brief Mass in Time of Struggle”), which was written throughout the Nazi occupation of Hungary and first carried out within the cellar of a bombed-out church. In the long run, it’s about resilience.
All of the works on this season are in dialog with the overarching theme—“the feeling of being an outsider wanting in,” Puleio writes in this system be aware. He advised Observer that “in Missa Brevis, the outsider is questioning. In The Traitor, the outsider is being compelled outdoors. In Scherzo, the outsider will get to ask them into his world. It’s all these completely different outsider experiences. After which Two Ecstatic Themes is only a solo determine, simply that particular person alone, determining falling, determining restoration, what it’s to be on my own, to undergo these items alone.”
However we’re not alone, and these 5 dances spanning ninety-three years and plumb the depths of the human expertise remind us of that.
The Limón Dance Firm will likely be at The Joyce Theater by way of November 10.
