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ONE of America's greatest modern dance troupes, the Jose Limon Dance Company, is having a significant birthday: its 60th.
Starting a two-week season at the Joyce Theater on Tuesday night, it paid tribute not just to Limon, but also to his mentor and the company's artistic director during its early years, Doris Humphrey, one of modern dance's founding mothers.
Humphrey died in 1958, Limon himself died in 1972, and the company has been resolutely directed by Carla Maxwell since 1978. This season, the troupe abandoned its usual eclectic mix, offering simply Limon and Humphrey classics and one New York premiere.
The novelty, Lar Lubovitch's "Recordare," is based on the Mexican folkloric pageant of the Day of the Dead. With lively music by Elliot Goldenthal, Lubovitch shows the grotesque mingling of Christian rites with ancient Aztec rituals, one that has voodoo-like skeletons emerging gaily from little boxes.
It's harmless, mildly attractive and, despite its reference to Limon's Mexican origins, totally unnecessary in a season otherwise devoted to exploring the company's roots and traditions.
Far more significant are the two major reconstructions of Limon's "Dances for Isadora" and Humphrey's "Day on Earth."
The very special Humphrey technique - one of the historic basic tenets of American modern dance - is fall/recovery, the fall from balance and its recovery to it. This 1947 "Day on Earth," depicting a multigenerational quartet, is a shrewd exposition of its style.
Limon's 1971 "Isadora" is, in a way, atypical of his work, being essentially a homage to Duncan with five solo dances to Chopin, and based on drawings and photographs of Isadora herself.
Yet it's a work worth preserving, and shows off the women of a company which, throughout its repertory, reveals a marvelously beguiling immediacy.
JOSE LIMON DANCE COMPANYThe Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., at 19th Street; (212) 242-0800. Season runs through Nov. 26.
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