La Malinche sob a visão de José Limón

Esse artigo pretende analisar um livro biográfico sobre José Limón, um coreógrafo de uma dança com o tema mexicano altamente complexo: a personagem histórica Malinche. José Limón and La Malinche:The dancer and the Dance de Patrícia Seed contém artigos de vários acadêmicos voltados para cenário, figurinos, música, notas coreográficas e conteúdo histórico sobre a peça musical que tem como protagonista a indígena que esteve ao lado de Hernán Cortés durante a captura do México e que, desde então, se destaca em trabalhos historiográficos, acadêmicos e literários, não só no México, mas em diversas partes do mundo.

The Golden Age of Mexican Modern Dance

To help him shape the dance component of the new Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), Carlos Chávez invited the leading exponents of Mexico’s opposing camps of modern dancers to assist him, along with an array of painters, composers, and writers. As part of INBA’s charge to create a universal culture attractive to international audiences, and at a time the U.S. was promoting modern dance as part of its WWII propaganda efforts in the Americas, Chávez’s team created a modern-dance focused Academy of Mexican Dance. Chávez would soon appoint polymath artist Miguel Covarrubias to lead INBA’s dance department, ushering in a “golden age” for Mexican modern dance. INBA underwrote lavish productions by internationally recognized choreographer José Limón, it also extended similar support to its novice choreographers who mounted productions with scores by its leading composers and scenic designs by its most famous artists.

Mexican American (Chicana/o)

Discussions and debates in and around the formation of Mexican American letters, including its periodization and formulations of its unique ontology, are reviewed, and discussions and analysis of key literary phenomena that have shaped in time (history) and space (region) Mexican American and Chicana/o letters are presented. Foundational scholars such as María Herrera-Sobek, Luis Leal, José Limón, and Juan Bruce-Novoa are considered along with scholar-creators such as Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga. A wide variety of Mexican American and Chicana/o authors of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction are reviewed, including Alurista, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Marío Suárez, Arturo Islas, Richard Rodriguez, and Ana Castillo, among many others.

Dent, Nancy Lima (1919–2013)

Nancy Lima Dent helped to establish modern dance in Toronto. She initially studied with Rita Warne and Boris Volkoff, and later was a student of modern dance luminaries Doris Humphrey, José Limon, Martha Graham, Charles Weidman, Pearl Primus, and Katherine Dunham. Starting in 1946, Dent worked as a performer and choreographer with the Toronto-based Neo Dance Theatre (renamed the New Dance Theatre in 1949). In 1960, Dent established her own dance company, the Nancy Lima Dent Dance Theatre. The company received positive critical reviews for their performances in prominent Toronto theaters including Hart House Theatre and the Centre Stage Theatre. Dent participated in three Canadian Ballet Festivals and she helped to found the Festival Evening of Modern Dance Festival in 1960. The festivals were well attended and critics noted that Dent’s choreography was especially engaging. In general, her choreographies highlighted personal expression, drew upon several modern dance techniques, and grappled with the political and ethical questions of her day. Dent was also a highly appreciated dance teacher who taught in various Ontarian cities for diverse types of students. She presented dance on television, and while recovering from an injury, she served as an effective administrator in various industries.

Schottelius, Renate (1921 – 1998)

German-born dancer and choreographer Renate Schottelius was a pioneer of modern dance in Argentina. Following early training in classical and modern dance in Berlin, she immigrated to Argentina in 1936, where she presented original work and in 1944 joined former Denishawn dancer Miriam Winslow’s company based in Buenos Aires. In 1953 Schottelius travelled to the United States, where she studied with Louis Horst, Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, Agnes de Mille, José Limón, and Hanya Holm. Schottelius’s choreography synthesizes her roots in German Ausdruckstanz and the U.S. modern dance tradition, reflecting not only her personal artistic biography, but also the confluence of modernist styles circulating through Argentina by the mid-20th century. In addition to her artistic contributions, Schottelius was at the forefront of initiatives to support modern dance production in Argentina, most notably the Friends of Dance Association (1962–1972). Over the course of her extensive performance and teaching career Schottelius also worked internationally at the Royal Swedish Opera, the Cullberg Ballet, and the Boston Conservatory of Music, Dance, and Theatre. A keen teacher of dance technique and composition, she mentored many influential Argentine modern dancers, including Oscar Araiz and Ana María Stekelman. Schottelius acted as artistic advisor to the Contemporary Ballet of the General San Martín Municipal Theatre until her death in Buenos Aires in 1998.

Brown in Black and White

In 1956, the Mexican American modern dance choreographer José Limón presented The Emperor Jones, an all-male dance based on the 1920 Eugene O’Neill play. Limón’s Emperor loosely follows the plot of O’Neill’s play, which famously tells the story of an African American Pullman porter who makes himself emperor of a “West Indies” island. To portray O’Neill’s characters, Limón put himself and his all-male cast in black body paint. Limón’s painted body is examined as three bodies: a brown Mexican body; a white “American” body (with the privilege to represent the Other); and the black body of the Brutus Jones character. Focusing on Limón’s homosocial casting, performance techniques, and engagement with minstrelsy, this article shows how Limón’s freedom to dance as a brown, black, and white body did not reveal the decline of raced and gendered borders, but rather their resilient presence as part of the field on which his dances were produced.