Karen L. Wooley, Ph.D.
Her nanoparticle research has many applications
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Karen L. Wooley, Ph.D. Her nanoparticle research has many applications |
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Limón Dance Company comes to Edison Oct. 11-13 By Liam Otten Jose Limón (1908-1972) was the first male "star" of American modern dance, a striking, charismatic performer and a powerful yet elegantly theatrical choreographer.
Performances begin at 8 p.m. Oct. 11-12 and at 2 p.m. Oct. 13. Born in Culiacan, Mexico, Limn grew up in Arizona and Los Angeles and planned to become a painter, even studying art for a year at University of California, Los Angeles. He attended his first modern dance concert after moving to New York in 1928 and soon came under the tutelage of choreographers Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, whose works he performed throughout the 1930s. At the same time, he also began to create his own dances, even choreographing and performing in several Broadway musicals, and in 1946, after a stint in the U.S. Army, he formed the Limón Dance Company with Humphrey as artistic director. Over the next quarter-century, Limón created dozens of athletic, physically demanding works that built on Humphrey's principles of weight, fall and recovery (as opposed to the illusory effortlessness of classical ballet) with frequent allusions to literature or current events. The Moor's Pavane (Variations on the Theme of Othello) (1949) distills Shakespeare's sprawling ensemble into a one-act drama for four dancers; The Traitor (1949) addresses the poisonous McCarthy hearings through the story of Judas. Other seminal works include There Is a Time (1956), Emperor Jones (1956) and Missa Brevis (1958). (Limón was posthumously inducted into the National Museum of Dance Hall of Fame in 1997.) Over the past three decades, Limón Dance has demonstrated that a company can remain artistically vital even after the passing of its founder. The troupe not only continues to perform and teach Limón's repertoire and technique but also has produced more than 50 works by some 30 major contemporary choreographers, including Donald McKayle and Billy Siegenfeld. The Edison Theatre performances will center on Limón's sometimes-overlooked epic Psalm (1967), which was recently restaged by artistic director Carla Maxwell for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, with new music by Jon Magnussen. A virtuoso display of ensemble dancing, the piece is in-spired by the Jewish legend of 36 just men (here condensed into one figure) who unknowingly carry the sorrows of the world upon their shoulders. Limón's stark yet propulsive choreography captures the isolation, anguish and ultimate redemption of the Just Man as he moves through a symbolic landscape of ritual, history and belief. The program also features Maxwell's Etude, a solo (performed by Jonathan Riedel) that debuted at the Winter Olympics and is derived from movements in Psalm and Limón's Dances for Isadora. Other works include Humphrey's classic Invention (1949), Susanne Linke's Transfiguration (1976) and Siegenfeld's recent If Winter (2001). The performance is made possible in part by support from the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; the Regional Arts Commission, St. Louis; and the New England Foundation for the Arts. Tickets are $27 and are available at the Edison Theatre Box Office, 935-6543, the Dance St. Louis Box Office, 534-6622, and through all MetroTix outlets. For further information, call 935-6543. |
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