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Starting Out
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Starting Out The orchestra applauded us, after which the first violinist stood up and, in the best English at his command, stated that he and the rest of the members wanted us to know that it was their honor to be playing for a company of artists. We had won our first step towards accomplishing our mission .' These words were written by a member of the JosC Lim6n Company, the first dance group funded under Eisenhower's new Emergency Fund. Its performances in November and December 1954 received rave reviews from critics in Rio de Janeiro, SPo Paulo, and Montevideo. The American Embassy sent a message to the State Department: "Lim6n Company top artistic and personal success. Even writer unfriendly United States praised highly."* Eisenhower's mission of reaching other people through our performing arts had been launched! The program was initiated with a request to the State Department in the fall of 1954.Many other countries were sending performing groups to the conference of the Inter-American Economic and Social Council in Rio de Janeiro, and the UNESCO conference that would shortly follow in Montevideo. The State Department deemed it extremely important that the United States have a strong presence through representative American culture. The USIA made its objectives regarding Latin America clear in a 1955 statement: The strategic importance of Latin America and the size of our stake in that area are well known. What is not so well known is that, first, a tremendous social and economic change, an upsurge, is taking place throughout Latin America; and, second, international communism is systematically exploiting the problems arising from that upsurge, seeking to foment hatred of the United States and establish footholds in the hemisphere.3 One factor in the choice of JosC Lim6n was that he was Mexican-born and Spanish-speaking. John Martin, the dance critic of The N e w York Times, commented on this in a review of the tour, which he accompanied: To send a Mexican-born dancer with a Spanish name into the Southern continent may look, at a quick glance, like a sure thing. But Mr. Lim6n himself saw in advance that just the reverse was the case for him, and he had hardly put foot on foreign soil before he began his campaign of correction . Though he spoke Spanish, which was a great help, he announced 24 / STARTING O U T loudly and firmly that he knew nothing of the Spanish dance, and could not do a zapateadoor a farucca if his life depended on it. Indeed, he could not even do a jarabe, for he left Mexico in infancy, was educated in North America, thought like a North American, and worked in the so-called modern dance, which had come to life in North America and was one of the most thoroughly indigenousart forms.' Pauline Koner, one of the company's leading dancers, reminisced in Solitary Song that Lim6n "was particularly happy that South America as well as Mexico had now accepted him, and the fact that he spoke Spanish brought him close to the people and the pres~."~ Lim6n's fluency in Spanish helped the audience achieve greater understanding of the originality and value of American modern dance. He told audiences in Rio and Montevideo: "With all our crudities, we are Americans. We are not afraid to declare ourselves, and have done so in our dance. The academic dance from Europe is not adequate to express what we have to say. Hemingway and Faulkner write in English, but they write like Americans. In the same way, we are trying to find a new language for American D a n ~ e . " ~ JosP Limdn, Rio deJaneiro, Language was, of course, not the only reason for choos1954 . Photo by F. Pamplona. ing Lim6n. In 1954 he was considered one of the most imporDance Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing tant modern dance choreographers. Forty-six years old, he Lena,., and was in his prime as a creator, performer, and teacher. His Foundations. mentor was Doris Humphrey, who, along with Martha Graham , had been a major figure in the creative transformation of American modern dance. While Lim6n did not create a new movement vocabulary as Humphrey and Graham had, his choreography was beautifully crafted, deeply expressive, and original. By 1954 Lim6n had created two masterpieces, and both were performed on the tour. The Moor's Pavane, choreographed in 1949, was one of the first modern dance works to enter the...