Jose Limon: An Unfinished Memoir

Jose Limon: An Unfinished Memoir





A captivating illustrated autobiography of the early years of a major American choreographer.

I believe that we are never more truly and profoundly human than when we dance. --José Limón

Though he lived to be 64, it's always seemed that dancer-choreographer José Limón (1908-1972) was snatched from this earth prematurely. For that reason, the appearance of Limón's unfinished biography--which has the same assured, sensitive quality as his dances--is such a treasure.

Limón's writings here tell of his childhood and early adult years. Born in Culiacán, Mexico, the eldest of 12 children, Limón showed great talent as a visual artist from early on. His family moved to the U.S. when he was 7 (first to Arizona, then California), where he attended Catholic school and continued his drawing and painting. It was not until the late '20s, when he moved to New York City to study art, that Limón saw his first dance concert and changed course entirely. "I knew with shocking suddenness that until then I had not been alive or, rather, that I had yet to be born," he writes. With a level of detail that belies his sense of miraculous discovery, he chronicles his work with and appreciation of such 20th-century choreographic masters as Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Martha Graham, and George Balanchine. The memoir ends just as Limón has formed his own company.

You couldn't ask for better stewardship for these papers, which had been viewable until now only at the dance collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The Society of Dance History Scholars, with Lynn Garafola acting as editor, drove this project. Carla Maxwell, the current artistic director of the José Limón Dance Company, wrote the foreword; and Village Voice dance critic Deborah Jowitt penned the introduction. For a short time, at least, Limon lives again. --Jean Lenihan









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