Jose Limon: movement larger than life.

• Author: Durbin, Paula
• Position: Dancer and choreographer

IN 1928 JOSE LIMON HITCHHIKED FROM LOS ANGELES TO NEW YORK, DETERMINED TO MAKE HIS MARK AS A PAINTER. HIS DISILLUSION UPON SEEING HIS PEERS IMITATING THE FRENCH POST-IMPRESSIONISTS WAS COMPOUNDED BY A CONVICTION THAT EL GRECO HAD, LONG AGO, SAID IT ALL. BUT DASHED HOPES PRECIPITATED A FORTUNATE CAREER CHANGE; LIMON DEVELOPED NONETHELESS INTO AN ARTIST, WHO, TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH, IS STILL CONSIDERED BY MANY THE GREATEST PERFORMER IN THE HISTORY OF MODERN DANCE. AND HIS LEGACY DOES NOT STOP THERE. THE TECHNIQUE HE INHERITED AND ENHANCED IS A CORNERSTONE OF TODAY'S IDIOM. HIS MASTERPIECES SURVIVE AS CLASSICS IN THE CONTEMPORARY REPERTOIRE. RECENTLY, BALLET SUPERSTAR MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV ACQUIRED THE 1942 COMPOSITION "CHACONNE," BASED ON A DANCE FROM COLONIAL MEXICO AND SET TO BACH'S "SONATA IN B MINOR." MOST IMPORTANTLY, THE LIMON FOUNDATION IS THRIVING: THE INSTITUTE TRAINS NEW GENERATIONS OF DANCERS, AND THE JOSE LIMON AMERICAN DANCE COMPANY THIS YEAR CELEBRATED THE GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY OF ITS NEW YORK DEBUT ON JANUARY 5, 1947.

Limon's lasting impression is also stamped on our image of the male dancer. There was a time when the world of dance was as sexist as that of business, only in reverse, mainly populated by ballerinas, chorines, and the "boys" who supported them. Limon was, in contrast, adult manhood at its finest, a perfect mix of power and grace, tall and classically proportioned, in the Greek sense rather than the balletic--not to mention the Indian cheekbones, the rugged jawline. If, as some say, El Greco might have painted him in later life, the young Limon could have been the model for French sculptor Auguste Rodin's Penseur. Words wore into cliches as the critics groped to describe a phenomenon who not only looked like a grown man but danced like one, and invariably they resorted to superlatives. "There is no other male dancer within even comparing distance of him," said the New York Times in 1944, and the point is constantly repeated: "A dancer without peer in his generation of male dancers," "the major male modern dancer-choreographer," "the first male dancer of our era."

Perhaps a woman, dance critic Deborah Jowitt, caught Limon's macho charisma when she compared him to "a magnificent bull," comprehending that he was structurally engineered to dance from his powerful shoulders. This upper body emphasis exploited the center of male strength, rather than the legs, as in ballet, where women have an advantage. Limon...