The Joyce Theater, New York, NY.
October 16, 2025.
In celebration of its 80th anniversary, the Limón Dance Firm carried out a blended program of outdated repertory and a brand new work by Diego Vega Solorza, a Mexican choreographer identified for bridging the visible arts with dance, on the Joyce Theater.
Chaconne (1942), set to Bach’s “Chaconne” with reside music by John Marcus on violin, was carried out by a large mixture of dancers from the previous and current, together with Limón2, firm alumni, college students, and older dancers who had carried out with the corporate sooner or later. Dancers have been grouped in quartets, sextets, duets and solos. The choreography, a collection of turns with variations in arm motion, was appropriate for the wide selection of movers on stage. Carrying easy tops of various colours and black pants, the piece featured repeated patterns of swirling turns, accompanied by a piqué step with a retiré — during which the foot was introduced as much as the again of the calf — as dancers stepped ahead and flowed throughout the stage. Limón’s gestural vocabulary and presentational nature supported the older dancers, who carried out the port de bras with fluidity.
The Emperor Jones (1956), impressed by Eugene O’Neill’s play about race, energy and colonialism, is aptly re-conceived right here. The unique, set on a Caribbean island, is now set towards the backdrop of a cityscape (Peta McKenna) which inferences the theme of capitalism. Jones (carried out by Johnson Guo) is the emperor of the boardroom as an alternative of an island. The choreography suggests a person of energy, and Maria Talan de la Rosa’s costume design has Guo carrying a big, holstered gun which hangs between his legs.
Whereas sitting in an infinite chair, the gun dangles, and the motion is choreographed with a number of wide-legged motion and walks with the chest puffed out and arms splayed to the facet. Coupes and extensions are carried out with the torso held straight and dealing with ahead. At one other level, in second place, the knees knock out and in. A battement is carried out in parallel to the facet whereas the arms are thrust ahead in a mechanical method quite than gliding ahead as a port de bras is commonly executed, all emphasizing Jones’s masculine prowess.
The ensemble — carried out by Ian Debona, Stephen Haley, Ty Morrison, Olivia Mozie, Deepa Liegel and Savannah Spratt in black swimsuit pants and white button-up shirts — strikes like an ensuing tidal wave, constructing with every step as they take up an increasing number of area and finally overcome Jones. It’s “The Man in White” (carried out by Joey Columbus), nevertheless, who usurps Jones’s energy in the long run.
In this system notes, it’s advised {that a} queer subtext is dropped at the forefront on this rendering. Whereas the homoerotic parlay between “The White Man” and Jones is recommended, there’s lots to be learn between the presentational traces of Limón’s choreography to really feel any actual warmth between the 2 characters; at finest, they seem as rivals. On this rendition, the luxurious jungle of O’Neill’s play, explored in Limón’s authentic piece, is changed by the stark cityscape, giving the piece the air of a boardroom the place one can think about the characters after hours in an empty high-rise workplace, preventing over who’s the very best hedge fund supervisor.
Within the closing piece, Jamelgos choreographed by Diego Vega Solorza with a rating by Ebe Oko, there’s some preliminary warmth between two dancers as a result of they’re bare or almost bare. The piece opens with a unadorned male dancer dangling from a pole. He drops to the ground the place one other male dancer lies splayed like a crucified Jesus. The hanging dancer mounts the opposite, who slowly rises from the ground, shouldering the bare dancer — groin to face — and carries him off.
The piece takes a flip. The ensemble — Johnson Guo, Ty Morrison, Savannah Spratt and Lauren Twomley (the forged shifted every night time) — in Julio César Delgado’s costumes, that are paying homage to Roman warriors however with a fetishistic twist, carry out at first slowly; the choreography resembles a balletic tai chi. In leather-based caps with white ponytails that seem like manes, the motion picks up, and dancers carry out in lockstep. With fast turns, the tails on the heads and butt items fly round in a flurry of white and cascade down across the dancers once they decelerate.
There isn’t any clear narrative in Jamelgos; as an alternative, it’s best loved for its sensual muscularity. Corey Whittemore’s lighting, which casts the dancers half in shadow and half in mild, does a spectacular job of highlighting each muscle on their our bodies. The horse theme doesn’t current itself as overly homoerotic (though one would possibly consider Peter Shaffer’s play Equus, which explores a younger man’s pathological non secular fascination with horses and confusion between “God” and sexual attraction), but it surely actually has an erotic feeling. The dancers seem as fantastically chiseled specimens. Are they satyrs? Is that this cosplay? The great thing about the choreography and costuming is the room it offers to overlay any interpretation your creativeness permits.
By Nicole Colbert of Dance Informa.
