José Limón

José Arcadio Limón (January 12, 1908 – December 2, 1972) was a dancer and choreographer from Mexico and who developed what is now known as 'Limón technique'. In the 1940s, he founded the José Limón Dance Company (now the Limón Dance Company), and in 1968 he created the José Limón Foundation to carry on his work.

In his choreography, Limón spoke to the complexities of human life as experienced through the body. His dances feature large, visceral gestures — reaching, bending, pulling, grasping — to communicate emotion. Inspired in part by his teacher Doris Humphrey's and Charles Weidman's theories about the importance of body weight and dynamics, his own Limón technique emphasizes the rhythms of falling and recovering balance and the importance of good breathing to maintaining flow in a dance. He also utilized the dance vocabulary developed by both Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, which aimed at demonstrating emotion through dance in a way that was much less strict and stylized than ballet as well as used movements of the body that felt most natural and went along with gravity.

Limón's most well-known work is The Moor's Pavane (1949), based on Shakespeare's Othello, which won a major award. Other works were inspired by subjects as diverse as the McCarthy hearings (The Traitor) and the life of La Malinche, who served as interpreter for Hernán Cortés. Limón generally sets his dances to music, choosing composers ranging from Ludwig van Beethoven and Frederic Chopin to Arnold Schoenberg and Heitor Villa-Lobos.

Education José Arcadio Limón was born January 12, 1908, in Culiacán, Mexico, the eldest of twelve children. In 1915, his family moved to Los Angeles, California. and later that same year he choreographed his first dance, "Etude in D Minor", a duet with Letitia Ide. Limón recruited Ide and schoolmates Eleanor King and Ernestine Stodelle to form "The Little Group". From 1932 to 1933, Limón made two more Broadway appearances, in the musical revue Americana and in Irving Berlin's As Thousands Cheer, choreographed by Charles Weidman. Limón also tried his hand at choreography at Broadway's New Amsterdam Theatre. Limón made several more appearances throughout the next few years in shows such as Humphrey's New Dance, Theatre Piece, With my Red Fires, and Weidman's Quest.

In 1937, Limón was chosen to be a Bennington Fellow. At the Bennington Festival at Mills College in 1939, Limón first own work was exhibited, titled Danzas Mexicanas. In 1958, following a US State Department funded tour of The Emperor Jones in Poland, Limón was asked by a Polish official if he had been permitted to perform The Emperor Jones in blackface in the United States. He responded to this query by writing that "Emperor Jones was first of all a work of art, and I hoped a good one, and that even if it were in defiance of prevalent political and social usages, no one would or could prohibit its performance." In this instance, the US government used Limón's work and its use of blackface as a response to international critics of its race relations by using art as a form of free speech free from sociopolitical constraints and one in which Limón was overtly complicit.

In 1962, the company returned to Central Park as the opening performance to New York's Shakespeare Festival. The next year, under sponsorship of the U.S. State Department, he toured the Far East for twelve weeks, choreographing The Deamon to a score by Paul Hindemith, who conducted the première.

In 1964, he went on to receive the Capezio Award and was appointed the artistic director of the American Dance Theatre at Lincoln Center.

In 1967, after performing with the company at Washington Cathedral, Limón received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He and his company were also invited to perform at the White House for President Lyndon B. Johnson and King Hassan II of Morocco.

José Limón considered Isadora Duncan, Harald Kreutzberg, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman as important influences on his style of dance. It was after seeing Humphrey perform in Inquest (1945) that Limón decided to focus his choreography on showing the beauty and tragedy of human life rather than on entertaining people. His technique was informed by Humphrey's ideas about the dynamics of body weight as the body rose, fell, and remained in suspension during a dance. He encouraged students to see their bodies as complex instruments — using the simile of an orchestra — and to strive for clarity and expressiveness of movement without tension.

Honors and legacy Limón received a number honorary doctorates in his lifetime, including from Wesleyan University, the University of North Carolina, Oberlin College, and Colby College.

In 1973, the José Limón Collection was given to the New York Public Library Dance Collection by Charles Tomlinson.

In 1988, the José Limón National Dance Award was created in his honor to recognize outstanding figures of contemporary and modern dance.

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts presented a retrospective exhibition on his life and work in 1996, and in 1997 he was inducted into the National Museum of Dance and Hall of Fame.

Choreography Year Title Notes 1930 Etude in D Minor 1930 Bacchanale 1930 Two Preludes 1931 Petite Suite 1931 B Minor Suite 1931 Mazurca 1932 Bach Suite 1933 Canción y Danza 1933 Danza (Prokofiev) 1933 Pièces Froides (Cold Pieces) 1933 Roberta 1935 Three Studies 1935 Nostalgic Fragments 1935 Prelude 1936 Satiric Lament 1936 Hymn 1937 Danza de la Muerte (Dance of Death) 1937 Opus for Three and Props 1939 Danzas Mexicanas (Mexican Dances) 1940 War Lyrics 1941 Curtain Raiser 1941 This Story Is Legend 1941 Three Inventories on Casey Jones 1941 Three Women 1941 Praeludium: Theme and Variations 1942 Chaconne solo created for Limón himself, set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach; has since been performed by Mikhail Baryshnikov 1965 Variations on a Theme of Paganini 1965 My Son, My Enemy 1966 The Winged ensemble work with music originally by Hank Johnson; restaged by Carla Maxwell in 1996 with new music composed for the dance by Jon Magnussen 1967 Mac Aber's Dance 1967 Psalm ensemble work with music originally by Eugene Lester; restaged by Carla Maxwell in 2002 set to new music composed for the dance by Jon Magnussen 1968 Comedy 1968 Legend 1969 La Piñata 1971 Revel 1971 The Unsungensemble work inspired by Native American chiefs; shown in 1970 as a work in progress 1971 Dances for Isadora set of solos in homage to Isadora Duncan, set to music by Frederic Chopin 1971 And David Wept 1972 Carlota 1972 Orfeo quintet based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, set to music by Ludwig van Beethoven 1971 The Windsfor Philadelphia Dance Theater 1986 Luther ? The Waldstein Sonata ensemble work completed after Limón's death by Daniel Lewis; with music by Ludwig van Beethoven