One of modern dance’s foremost male dancers and choreographers, José Limón (1908-1972) drew upon a wide range of source material in creating 74 works, many now acknowledged as masterpieces (notably The Moor’s Pavane). After his initial inspiration when he attended a dance performance by Harald Kreutzberg at the age of twenty, he began his training in the studio of Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman. When he formed his own company in 1946, Doris Humphrey served as the group’s artistic director and the company made its Pillow debut that same year with a program that included Humphrey’s Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías. While Limón and his company achieved considerable fame and recognition during his lifetime, the Limón Dance Company later became known as the first modern dance group to outlive its founder, and it has continued to present both new and classic works in the decades since his death. The work seen here was one of his final statements, premiered just two months before his death as an ode to his late wife, the Denishawn dancer Pauline Lawrence.
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