Jose Limón Dance Company Previews Work in Progress

On December 14, the MetLife Foundation Music of the Americas Concert Series held its last event of 2011 with a presentation and performance of the Jose Limón Dance Company. Among the participants were jazz legend Paquito D’Rivera, resident choreographer of the Brazilian dance troupe Grupo Corpo, Rodrigo Pederneiras, and Limón’s Artistic Director Carla Maxwell. The evening featured a thought-provoking discussion and demonstration of the new collaboration between D’Rivera, Maxwell, and Pederneiras.

The evening began with a conversation on the creative process and the importance of communication with both the performers and the audience in creating a new work. Two of Limón’s dancers, Durell Comedy and Logan Kruger, showed a brief section of the work in progress. Pederneira screened two video excerpts of pieces he created for Corpo, called onqotô and Lecuona.

This collaboration began with the commission of a new work by Paquito D’Rivera for the CUNY Graduate Center. Entitled Ladies in White, the piece was inspired by “The Cuban Black Spring,” an episode where 75 Cuban activists were arrested and sent to prison on charges of undermining Cuba’s independence. In response to the arrests, the mothers of those incarcerated dressed in white and marched in the streets, calling themselves “Las Damas de Blanco,” or “Ladies in White.” After hearing the premiere of D’Rivera’s new work, the Limón Dance Company asked if he would be interested in writing a new piece, so D’Rivera used Ladies in White and expanded the work for dance. In addition to this piece, the composer created an additional movement based on a rhythm from the national dance of Cuba, the danzón. He envisioned two people, while working in a garden on the island, stumbling upon musicians playing a danzón. As the piece progresses, the couple begins to dance and eventually fall in love.

The collaboration is uncharted territory for both the composer and the choreographer as it will be D’Rivera’s first dance commission and Pederneiras’s first choreography for an American dance company. Each collaborator highlighted the necessity to work as part of a community in order to both facilitate the production of the piece and effectively communicate to the audience the work’s overarching theme. Luckily, technology affords this team the luxury of sending recordings via e-mail and sharing musical sketches with what D’Rivera calls “plastic instruments,” as well as videoconferencing over Skype. Though the piece is not in its final form, the small excerpt seen on Wednesday night will assuredly pique the interests of jazz and dance enthusiasts.

The Jose Limón Dance Company will give a full preview performance of their new commission on Sunday, January 22 at the Tilles Center.

Excerpt of New Work

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