Christensen 1

Kathleen Christensen
Dance History
Caroline Prohosky
16 March 2014
A Pioneer for Modern Dance
When someone says the name Jose Limon in a room of dancers, there is a murmur that
fills the space. The murmur is full of remarks honoring the pioneer Limon has been to the dance
world. To begin understanding Limon there must be knowledge of his adolescence. He was born
in 1908 in Mexico. His father was a musician giving Limon exposure to musicality early in his
life. He was the oldest of 11 children and 4 of them died early in their lives. The Mexican
Revolution threatened the lives of his family in 1910, pushing them to leave Mexico (HerreraSobek). In the lecture we had concerning Missa Brevis, we learned that while the Mexican
Revolution raged on, Limon witnessed his own uncle's death in their home. The bullets came
through their home and his uncle did not to get down for cover. Instead he went to the window to
see what was happening and was caught in the crossfire (Limon).
Limon remembered the truce between the armed forces at 3 o' clock that day and the Red
Cross picking up his half dead uncle. His uncle died in the hospital. The battle picked back up
and his mother became ill. She would shiver and cry out in delirium while the family would
cower under mattresses and sheets. It is intriguing to learn that after the battle the children found
the empty calibers from the fight. This quickly gave Limon an education of the market system.
The children would barter one with another. They would pretend to be the revolutionaries and the
federalists, all to his disgust in his older years (Limon).
His early experience with dance was the jarabe, the national Mexican dance. Limon, even
as an adolescent, found pride and honor in traditional dances. He had a knowledge of his
country's past, which influenced him later in his life to always value where the culture has been

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and where it is going. Limon once said, Dance is a moment and then it is finished. I do not
believe durability is one of the great virtues. I don't think I would appreciate a lily that has been
embalmed. There will be other dancers...(Pollack).
When Limon was still young he saw the dance of the bullfight. There is no way to
adequately express what this dance did for him as an artist. The bullfight is symbolic of a man's
struggle with life. This can be related to the taming of food, land, shelter and then to a ritual
sacrifice. The dance had many twists and created elaborate lines with the body (Sharpes). The
dance eloquently made man seem larger than life and these gestures and grandeur movement
inspired Limon through the rest of his life (Limon).
As Limon's family moved to a new town, his mother cared for his new baby brother
during the trip. The train was full of people accompanied by the sad sound of an accordion
playing the entire way. Limon says, ...how the memory of this scene lies in ambush to assault
and torment me when I least expect it! How I abhor the sound of the accordion! (Limon).
Limon's baby brother was sick and could not stop crying on this terrible ride and later his baby
brother suffocated in his mother's arms while no one could do anything about it (Limon).
Limon did not have all bad experiences in his youth, but he did not get to experience
adolescence as many other dancers have. The deaths in his family were harsh and did not let the
light of mercy shine through. Once he arrived in Arizona he began school and mastering the
english language. Once in school the children were taking turns reading sentences and his turn
came last. He read his sentence, but only to be jeered and laughed at by his fellow classmates. In
that moment he became an exile and he made a vow to himself. He made up his mind to learn
the language that he felt had no relation to the way it was written and he would do it better than
those who made fun of him (Limon).
Limon kept his vow and he learned everything he could about the english language. This
is just one brief example of how hard he was able and willing to work. His determination set him

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apart from others in his youth. His profound love for his mother and the sadness of her death
only pushed him to be stronger and more courageous in the world he found himself in. The
dedication he had deep within his soul drove him through school where he found his love of art.
He writes fondly of Miss Myrta Herbert who was one of his school teachers. He states,
With her we lived in daily communion with the Parthenon, the frescos at Knossus, the
Etruscans, Giotto, the Sistine Chapel, Chartres, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Goya, all the sublime
achievements of Western art (Limon). Through his love of art he found new friends. These
friends had a large impact on him, and opened up his mind to new ideas about politics and
differing opinions. Limon studied art at the University of California and found himself largely
disappointed with the program. He left the program to join his friends in New York (Biography
Channel).
It is important to gain an understanding that Limon was upset by others who would
imitate the great artists of the past. It was to Limon's dismay that he found the artist of his
dreams amongst the lofty galleries of New York, El Greco. El Greco is profoundly inspirational
due to his approach to expressionism and cubism. He is so individual that his style cannot be
traced back to one school. He brings Byzantine style together with Western style in a way that
has not been matched since and cannot be duplicated. Color was most important to Greco and
found great beauty in elongating the human anatomy. His religious works cannot be mistaken
(Hnse). Greco had already done what Limon desired to accomplish. It broke his soul to see what
he thought he had as original ideas to have been done hundreds of years prior. Instead of letting
this stop his dreams, he was determined to make is mark in the artistic world. This artist then
influenced Limon to be the artist he is known as today.
The woman that Limon had been seeing had tickets to a dance show. He attended with
her with a completely uneducated mind regarding dance. Once the dancers took the stage
however, he was over taken with the unearthly experience that was taking place in front of him.

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Limon said of this experience, I knew with shocking suddeness that until then I had not been
alive or rather, that I had not been born (Biography Channel). After this show, Limon was so
concerned that he might have been too late in his discovery of dance. He immediately set out on
a search that would change his life and the lives of dancers forever.
He began to take class from the profoundly important, Doris Humphrey. With
Humphrey's new school, Limon stepped into the world that would give him life. Humphrey's
technique all revolved around the arc between 2 deaths. She expounded on what dance is with
pure movement that comes from gravity. She would use nonmusical rhythms for her fall and
recovery ideas. She also believed that movements themselves could create meaning (Young).
Limon found a home within the studio. He felt that a dancer was born in that timid, shy,
and self-consciousness of the revealing clothes dancers wear. Limon's body was unprepared for
the exercises Humphrey asked of him, but he did not shy away. Instead these gave him the
moment he lived for, the moment to be back in the studio. Limon's past all became clear to him
as he moved through the space with Humphrey as his guide. The bullfight he loved, the heritage
he came from, the fears of his adolescence, they all made themselves important in the life he was
creating. The life he had was now beautiful in creation of movement and this birth (Biography
Channel).
Through the teachings of Humphrey, he experienced training in theory and in practice.
Charles Weidman was Humphrey's partner in teaching and brought an entirely different idea to
Limon. Weidman was a natural clown and laughter filled his classroom, but it was a challenge
for the long body of Limon. Weidman enjoyed the same practice as Humphrey concerning fall
and recovery and he wanted to know what happens before and after the fall. There was a lot of
experimentation of what the unfolding of the body is like. How would the body react from the
falling of the body from joint to joint? This teaching also helped Limon develop the sense of
masculinity that men have in dance. Often men can be trained to dance with qualities of women,

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but Weidman would not let that happen in his classroom (Lancos).
Limon was a dancer for 10 years for Humphrey-Weidman. He found himself a rather
inflexible dancer because of his muscle bound body. The dedication of his youth once again
pushed him to stretch by the hour in his sweat over his legs just trying to get a little further. He
would not allow something such as this stand in the way of what he loved. He believed in this art
he knew as dance. He said to himself as he stretched alone in the studio, This is art. Serious,
even tragic art (Limon).
Humphrey was soon proud of Limon and his hard work when the first audition presented
itself. He was truly mortified and would have left had it not been for others in the class. He was
immediately picked due to his looks though Humphrey told the producer that he was only a
beginner. Limon kept taking class and felt the new challenges of each class as HumphreyWeidman broke free of their past with Tedshawn. They were discovering the art of being
American dancers, not the ethnic dancers that they had been portraying (Lancos).
Limon could not keep himself away from the tragedies of the time and was drafted into
the war in 1943 and drove trucks. Soon he found himself in special divisions directing dance
performances. Upon his arrival back to the states, he established his own company and hired
Doris Humphrey as his artistic director. Limon began to make his mark with his ideas
surrounding dance and art being a state of mind. He desired to express the connection of the
average life through dance. There was so much beauty around people and the relationship
between the body and gravity. This was not something that Limon could just ignore. There is no
strict documentation for Limon's technique because a strict codification would stop the
cultivation of movement (Lloyd).
Limon never could just stop creating. He has been hailed as one of the finest male
dancers by countless dance critics. One night when he performed in a theatre in New York, he
broke a preconceived notion that other dancers had in mind concerning movement. The theory

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used to be that subjective movement could not be divided by one person for another except in
group works (the group members being held negligible until each in time became a
choregrapher)(Lloyd). Limon broke this idea. He danced creatively in a piece that he had not
composed. He continued on this path of proving many notions about modern dance wrong.
Another example is when he came home from the war he went straight to ballet classes to get
himself back in alignment. He believed that modern dance has never been completely separate
from ballet. Limon found the structure of ballet a way to ease into the free movement of
suspension and release (Lloyd).
Limon's struggle in his adolescence made him stronger. This is one way that Limon
connected so well with modern dance. Being a modern dancer is full of struggle, but it only
makes a dancer stronger. He emerged as a remarkable artist. The training of Weidman did not
leave him as a comedic dancer, but gave him the fruits of masculine technique (Limon). Limon
not only was a dancer, but he also had messages that he desired to share with the world. One that
I have had the opportunity of seeing is Missa Brevis.
Upon seeing this piece, the religious relationships on stage were so bold and loud
compared to what is commonly seen on stage today. The lecture that was held this semester gave
a beautiful background of the music used for this piece. Limon's sense of music gave him the
knowledge he needed to choose such powerful music. Limon was inspired from an experience he
had while touring Poland during the postwar of World War II. This was a moment that reversed
some of his bitter emotions toward the Catholic Church, God, and rekindled a spirituality hid
deep for years. However, he was not the only one affected by the courage of the people coming
out of war, in fact the man, Kodly, who produced the music score that added to the connection
of faith, art and war was impacted by the scene of postwar in a similar manner (Limon).
Limon was able to draw upon all his experiences to create masterpieces such as this one.
He did not block experiences from himself because he knew that they could help him create

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something on stage. His experience in Poland brought him closer to God, when he once felt
himself to be distant and tried to believe that God did not exist. Limon allowed his creativity to
be his avenue and his audience used it as their avenue as well, to find out what they truly
believed. Limon never hesitated to put his entire soul on stage which in turn was the audiences
soul. He is known to be a pioneer for many reasons and his expression of spirit, mind, and body
is one of them.
There is no codification of Limon technique. His influence upon the dance world does not
only rest with fall and recovery. It lies within the expression of the true person. Limon felt
something inside him that spoke to a greater cause than himself, that drove him to teach and love
dance. Creativity was the key for Limon. He never tried to smother the creative genus inside a
person. He did not seek to tear down, but to build and unite what was in his world. For this he is
a true pioneer for modern dance.

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Works Cited
Hnse, Michael S. El Greco: Google eBook, 2004. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
Herrera-Sobek, Maria. Celebrating Latino Folklore: Google eBook, 2012. Web. 17 Mar. 2014
Jos Limn." 2014. The Biography Channel website. Mar 18 2014, 12:44
Lancos, Jonette. Reclaiming Charles Weidman: Edwin Mellen Press Limited, 2007. Web. 18
Mar. 2014
Limon, Jose. An Unfinished Memoir. London: University Press of New England, 2001. Print.
Lloyd, Margaret. The Borzoi Book of Modern Dance. First ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc,
1949. Print.
Pollack, Barbara, and Charles H. Woodford. Dance Is A Moment. Pennington: Princeton Book
Company, Publishers, 1993. Print.
Sharpes, Donald K. Sacred Bull, Holy Cow: A Cultural Study of Civilization's Most Important
Animal: Google eBook, 2006. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
Young, Grace. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Ed. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.