Limón
Dance Company
Arlene Schnitzer
Concert Hall 1037 SW Broadway, 224-8499
7:30 pm Wednesday, May 26
$19.50-$29
Even the anticipation surrounding Mikhail Baryshnikov's arrival
to the Portland stage later this month can't eclipse what
is likely to be the best contemporary dance performance of
the year. That the Limón Dance Company, this country's
oldest modern dance company, has existed for 53 years is in
itself remarkable. In an era when good companies fold due
to the unprecedented dearth in arts funding, José Limón's
company is still thriving, receiving steady commissions and
teaching its founder's technique worldwide.
As a dancer in the 1930s, José Limón banished
the popular ideation of the light, pretty male dancer with
his bulky upper body and raw physical power. His company,
which he founded in New York City in 1946, included multi-ethnic,
multi-generational dancers before any other. As a choreographer,
Limón emphasized the tactile over the visual, investing
his dances with both a sweeping, theatrical grandeur and
a feeling of the nobility of the human spirit. Working from
a philosophy that connected movement to human experience,
he trained his dancers to originate their movements from
the chest rather than the legs, as in classical ballet,
creating a weighted style that carries emotional resonance.
One of the program's longer works, Limón's A
Choreographic Offering (1964) is set to J.S. Bach's
A Musical Offering. The work, based on movements
from Limón's mentor and artistic director, the radical
choreographer Doris Humphrey, is a series of nine architectural
configurations of movement, from Solo to Dance
for Fourteen. The dancers weave together and dissolve
in continual, graceful patterns, but the piece goes beyond
the classical carving of spatial images. Throughout, the
company gives the sense of a triumphant community, exemplifying
the potency of Limón's organic, body-based style
of movement.
Limón's The Winged (1966) was originally
choreographed for 28 dancers and performed in utter silence;
at the last minute, Limón incorporated incidental
music and sound effects by Hank Johnson. A new 13-instrument
score has been commissioned from Jon Magnussen, who drew
musical inspiration from the choreography, a reversal of
the typical technique. His score marries naturalistic sound
with pianistic percussion. The Winged's unique
gestural movements were inspired by the flight and behavior
of birds. The piece emulates soaring flight formations,
the preening and fluttering of birds on the ground, mating
rituals and the bloody mortal combat of game cocks.
Like much of Limón's work, The Winged is
breathtakingly elegant in its use of theater and myth, accomplishing
an elevation of the human spirit through movement. Limón's
humanist philosophy is never far away; the power of his
work is not only in the sculptural design of movement in
space but in the archetypes of community that his dancers
embody.
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Willamette Week | originally
published May 19, 1999
|
