WHAT TO DO WITH MIDCENTURY MODERNISM?

The first piece on the evening bill of the José Limon Dance Company’s residency at the Joyce was Limón’s Chaconne. As the director’s note in the program points out, the chaconne was a Mexican musical style interpreted by European composers. This piece, from 1942, was given a contemporary makeover, in homage: the stage was filled with dancers from the company, past, present, and future (there were high schoolers performing also.) It was an onstage ritual and reunion in real time, to virtuosic live violin accompaniment.

 Limón Dance Company in José Limón's Chaconne

Chaconne was followed by a speech explaining what the audience had just seen, followed quickly by the second piece of the evening, another Limón, from 1956, entitled The Emperor Jones. In this frenetic, high-drama western, two men face off in a world of simulated gambling (dancers balling their hands and shaking invisible dice), sin (dancers in a semi-nude pile of flesh, rippling under red lights), and violence (there is a prop gun, onstage.)

 Limón Dance Company in The Emperor Jones

After an intermission, the company presented a new, non-canonical work: Jamelgos, by Mexican choreographer Diego Vega Solorza. The piece began with a stark image: in a crucifix-shaped beam of projected light, a downwardly-facing prostrate body, naked, save for a single flowing white tail lying across the separation of the subject’s buttocks; above, a fully nude, powerful frame of a man, Ty Morrison, hanging from a suspended metal bar. What originates as a suspenseful moment – when will Ty let go? Who are these bodies? – resolves into a stamp of a charged image: the once suspended man, now fallen, trots away on the neck of the other, tail swishing behind in the unmistakable silhouette of horseback.

 Limón Dance Company in Diego Vega Solorza's Jamelgos

Overall, the impression I had is of a treasure trove that has rusted, which, as a setting, underutilizes its jewels (if you will: its talented dancers.) The men and women of this company sweat, strain, and force their bodies into sharp contractions and elongated curves fluidly, perfectly on tempo, but to serve what vision? The second piece, reverberating with overly dramatic, escalating cinema-score music, presents a pantomimed version of male violence that cannot hold up in 2025; its flimsy arm-flaps and jazzy stomps also cannot hope to match the fevered pitch of the music, resulting in a very limp and crudely performative showdown.

The last piece, too, which the program describes as a “powerful response to Limón’s oeuvre†loses its power after its dynamite introduction. Where is the promise of that ominous entrance, with its warriors slowly stalking into the space, perusing their surroundings as a cloud of mist rises and hangs in the air? In the minutes that follow, which should be the consummation of that enticing promise, Solorza lingers too long in every image, like he is overly attached to his own formations. Instead of a dynamic structure that creates images as it moves, the piece becomes a strung-together litany of sometimes literally static poses. At the end, the dancers clump together in an orgy of sweat, skin, and sinew, and move over one another in slow motion; a strobe lasting a painfully long moment blares, the actual (anticlimactic) dénouement of the piece. The audience is not fooled; we know a cheap trick when we see one. Still, we watch, because these dancers are worth it.

photos by Steven Pisano

Limón Dance Company
Joyce Theater
reviewed October 16, 2025
ends on October 19, 2025
for tickets, visit The Joyce