Limon Dance Company - Ann Arbor

[miliosr]

My itinerant wanderings in support of the Limon Dance Company continued this past weekend as I attended the company's Friday evening (01/13) performance at the Power Center on the University of Michigan campus. (The company was there for three performances -- their first perfomances in Ann Arbor since November 1969 (!!!))

The Power Center seats 1,400 and, with the exception of some empty seats on the extreme left and right of the main floor, it was a very full house. The program consisted of five dances and, to my mind, was a model of what modern dance repertory programming should be.

For those keeping score at home, Kurt Douglas and Kristen Foote are back with the company (both were on leave during the November performances in Washington, DC) but Charles Scott was no longer listed as a company member and the company notified the audience in a program insert that Brenna Monroe-Cook, who was still listed as a company member in the program, would not be dancing during the Ann Arbor engagement.

So, without further ado, here are my impressions:

Evening Songs (Jiri Kylian, 1987)

I wrote about this piece in my write-up of the Limon Company's performances in DC in November and my impression of it hasn't changed. It is a gentle, lyrical piece that serves as a nice warm-up for what is in store. The analogy I would use would be dipping your toe in a warm bath and discovering that it's just the right temperature!

Angelitos Negros (Donald McKayle, 1972)

This is a solo extract from a much longer McKayle dance suite called Songs of the Disinherited. The dance is set to a Roberta Flack song of the same name and displays a strong affinity with flamenco. It served as an ideal vehicle for the company's most senior dancer -- Roxane D'Orleans Juste -- and her unsupported downward diagonal balances (which were a mighty feat of strength) brought gasps from the audience. This dance racheted the intensity of the audience response up a notch from Evening Songs and really got everyone "into" the evening.

I did feel that there were some static sections to this piece (not a reflection on the dancer) and I was left wondering what it would look like in its natural setting -- as part of Songs of the Disinherited. Still, this was an admirable dance performed by an admirable dancer -- it is difficult to find too much fault.

Chaconne (Jose Limon, 1942)

This lyrical solo set to Bach is Jose Limon's oldest surviving dance. I thought Raphael Boumaila gave a beautiful rendering of the choreography. He has magnificent upper body carriage and it was the magnificence of this carriage that left me with the after image of him as a regal and dignified bullfighter. The dance is abstract so I don't know why I made the mental connection to bullfighting but that is what I took away from it.

This dance went over very well with audience and you could feel the intensity of the evening continue to build.

(INTERMISSION)

The Moor's Pavane (Jose Limon, 1949)

Jose Limon's most celebrated dance, set to Purcell, made a welcome return for this performance. On the plus side, I thought the dancing was exquisite. The four dancers beautifully captured the dynamic shadings and modulations of the pavane as it slowly disintegrates under the stress of the participants' various intrigues and emotional upheavals. It was also nice to see it on a medium-sized stage instead of the opera-house stages where it is usually seen (to its disadvantage.)

I did have one negative reaction to the performance and it is not inconsiderable. While the dancing was lovely and was set off to advantage by the size of the stage, I felt that the performance as a whole lacked the kind of grand theatricality that this dance demands. Of the four dancers, only Raphael Boumaila as The Moor came close to displaying the larger-than-life quality that the original Limon Dance Company used to display as a matter of course in this work.

I feel churlish writing this as I quite liked the performance. I just think that what was great could be greater still with the right kind of charisma emanating from the dancers. I may be asking for the impossible, though, as I do believe that grandly theatrical dancers like Jose Limon are born and not made.

All that being said, the audience loved, loved, LOVED this piece and it set things up perfectly for the final piece.

(INTERMISSION)

Concerto Six Twenty-Two (Lar Lubovitch, 1986)

This piece -- set to Mozart -- was tremendous and fit the company perfectly. I could go on and on about this dancer or that dancer but, really, everyone was tremendous in it and, when the dance came to its dynamic conclusion, the audience erupted in a loud and sustained standing ovation.

Having seen the Limon Dance Company on three occasions in the last three years, I have to say that the company is in excellent shape as it heads into its 60th aniversary season (2006-07) and the centenary of Jose Limon's birth (2007-2008). As a unit, the dancers represent a highly flexible instrument that can handle just about everything that comes their way.

The challenge, as I see it, for company director Carla Maxwell is to decide what she wants the company to be as it moves forward. Is it primarily a repository for the works of Limon and Doris Humphrey (who was conspicuously absent from all three engagements I saw?) Or is it a true modern dance repertory company performing works from every era of the modern dance? (And, if it's the latter, does the Limon/Humphrey repertory suffer as a result?)

I'm not sure I know what the answers are but then that's why she gets paid the "big money" -- to figure these things out!

[miliosr]

FYI -- The latest issue of Dance Magazine has a short feature (by Robert Tracy) about Ryoko Kudo's debut as Emilia in The Moor's Pavane at the Ann Arbor performances.

Also, the Los Angeles Times printed an interview with Carla Maxwell on Thursday in advance of the company's performances of Missa Brevis this weekend. The article puts the number of Limon dances at "nearly 100". (I've heard the number put at 70-something and at 80-something so let's just say that Limon's total output is somewhere in the 70-100 range.) Carla Maxwell is quoted as saying that "We only have some form of record for 22 of those dances." I was quite surprised by this low figure. If formal documentation is that low for Limon, what is it like for Doris Humphrey?

[Amy Reusch]

And what constitutes formal documentation? Film? Labanotation? Reconstructions based on the memories of the dancers? Labanotations of those reconstructions?

Which reminds me, is there a name for the type of dancer who remembers all the steps (other than "treasure")? I'm thinking of Frederic Franklin types... they have such a facility for remembering choreography that they will remember what other dancers' parts are as well. It seems to be a type, although rare... I've run into a couple of these who can watch a broadcast of a ballet they've never seen before and later show you the steps of their favorate parts.

[miliosr]

Another source I stumbled across also mentions 22 preserved Limon dances. But this source also states that, "parts of eight others remain on silent film."