Abstract
In 1950, modern dance reached a wide public in Mexico. Artist Miguel Covarrubias directed the new Department of Dance at INBA and invited renowned modern dancer José Limón to Mexico City. There Limón choreographed dances rooted in pre-Columbian myths while using modern techniques: the focus on the breath, grounding to the floor, and the isolation of parts of the body. Critics in Mexico embraced Limón as their own and applauded his gentlemanly performance of masculinity at a time when the state was campaigning to replace revolutionary aggression with bureaucracy. At the same time, critics in the United States claimed Limón as American. This chapter examines Limón’s hybrid humanist choreographies and his complicated role as Arts Ambassador for the United States during the Cold War.
…We are told that the body is a wonderful machine, and so it is, in part. But this leads to an absorption with body mechanics and an obsession with technique which loses sight of the objective: the communication of the human spirit.
—Doris Humphrey, The Art of Making Dances
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Notes
- 1.
Limón’s memorable 1951 performance of the piece is readily available on video on the Limón Dance Company website.
- 2.
In later decades several writers offered feminist revisions of the story of Malinche. See in particular Sandra Cypess, La Malinche in Mexican Literature (University of Texas Press, 1991).
- 3.
Waldeen had played the role of advocate of nationalist art from the start of her work in Mexico. She trained Amalia Hernández, the woman who was to found in 1952 the Ballet Folklórico, an institution which to this day holds court in the Palacio de Bellas Artes representing Mexico through stylized folklore dances performed by highly technically trained dancers.
- 4.
For more on the Cold War in the hemisphere , see Claire F. Fox, Making Art Pan-American: Cultural Cold War. U of Minnesota Press, 2013, and Patrick Iber, Neither Peace Nor Freedom: Cultural Cold War in Latin America. Harvard University Press, 2015.
- 5.
Although Limón received support and protection from the U.S. government in his post, not all of his border-crossing peers in the arts escaped the Cold War unscathed. Carlos Chávez was denied a visa to conduct in Los Angeles in 1954, despite his published declarations denouncing Stalinism . When influential American friends intervened, officials granted Chávez his visa. U.S.-born dancer Waldeen was also denied a visa to return to the U.S., because she had participated in events promoting socialism . On the southern side of the border, the Mexican government declared the deportation of Xavier Francis in 1956 and again in 1958 for purported communist sympathies. Like Chávez , Francis may have been labeled by association, as he identified as Christian and did not publicly espouse Marxism. The dance teacher skirted the deportation order and was able to stay on in Mexico City until his death in 2000.
- 6.
Miguel Covarrubias died a premature death in 1957. Limón passed away in 1972 following a bout with cancer. Marc Chagall, who designed the sets and costumes for Aleko in 1942 in Mexico City, lived nearly a hundred years, from 1887–1985. Carlos Chávez also stayed active, composing and conducting between Mexico and the United States until his death in 1978. The longest-lived ally of the Cosmic Generation, Chávez’s constant friend and collaborator Aaron Copland, lived to complete his 90th year of life in 1990.
- 7.
As of 2015 the Limón Dance Company maintains a relationship with the Dance Theatre of Harlem, sharing New York studio space and resources with the ballet company founded by fellow dance icon Arthur Mitchell (1934–).
- 8.
Limón’s work in the 1960s on social justice included “Psalm,” on the WWII death camps in Poland, “The Unsung,” on Native American heroes, and “Legend,” honoring black patriots and martyrs in the United States.
Bibliography
Texts
———. “Reportajes a la danza: Xavier Francis,” Excélsior, sección C, 19 de agosto de 1956: 10.
———. La danza escénica de la Revolución mexicana, nacionalista y vigorosa. Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, 2000.
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Guerrero, E. (2018). 1950s: The Hybrid Body. In: Dance and the Arts in Mexico, 1920-1950. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92474-8_4
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