For José Limón's Centennial, a Powerful 'Traitor' and Some Lesser Sins

As long as we lie, hate, envy and betray, José Limón's work will continue to fascinate. He excelled at what you might call sin in a shadow box -- a pungent, compressed study, as immediate as it is brief. The best of these -- created in the late 1940s and '50s -- are at once simple and twisted, a blend of folkloric expressionism and reticent neurosis.

Limón's best as well as his mediocre was on view at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater this past weekend, where the Limón Dance Company performed three works as part of the choreographer's centennial celebration, which started a year ago. One of the early founders of modern dance in this country, Limón died in 1972, but under the direction of former company member Carla Maxwell, his troupe has continued to thrive. Its repertoire is a mixed bag, however; for every piercing performance of "The Moor's Pavane," say -- Limón's most famous work, a miraculously concise retelling of the "Othello" story -- there are those Limón works that feel dated and heavy-handed.

This was the case with Friday's program, featuring a major revival of "The Traitor," Limón's 1954 take on the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot; a suite from "A Choreographic Offering," Limón's tribute to his co-founder and mentor, the influential choreographer Doris Humphrey; and "Psalm," inspired by the Jewish idea of the Just Men, ordinary folks who, unbeknown to them, have been divinely designated to be vessels for humanity's grief. What this program told us is that Limón was far less gifted as a choreographer than as a dramatist. He made pleasant dances ("Choreographic Offering") and impenetrable ones ("Psalm"), but he made great dance-dramas. "The Traitor" is one of these.

Limón drew on the blunt, theatrical Catholicism of his Mexican upbringing for this shattering and nuanced view into a conflicted mind. A white sheet stretched between the dancers' hands is brilliantly transformed into a table for the nervously shifting groupings at the Last Supper, attended by the Leader (Jonathan Fredrickson) and his Followers. As Kurt Jooss discovered in his 1932 antiwar work "The Green Table," a table is a marvelous dance prop for the way it bisects the body and focuses attention on the face and hands, and for the ways it can be manipulated into a stage-within-a-stage.

Everything about this work feels distinct and earthy. You could see the rough-hewn, iconic images of old Mexican carvings of saints in the simplicity of movement for the Leader and the Traitor (Francisco Ruvalcaba). With its bold gestures and firm rhythms (music by Gunther Schuller, "Symphony for Brasses and Percussion"), "The Traitor" was part passion play, part folk dance, and from both of these traditions it gained a powerful plainness. Limón created "The Traitor" as McCarthyism was at full tilt, and the darkness of that period, and the terrible consequences for all, echoed in the work's sudden, seamless climax that saw the Traitor hang himself as the Leader was carried off to his own fate.

The direct, primitive energy that infused "The Traitor" did not carry into many of Limón's later works. The large-scale, rambling suite from "A Choreographic Offering" (1964) still possesses an elemental clarity of movement, however: The body is outstretched and opened up, jumps arc smoothly through the air, the musical accents are sharp and clear. This airy spaciousness gives the excerpt, performed to Bach's "A Musical Offering," a sense of lift, of honest feeling and elegant unfussiness. It's a charming work. Yet once you've seen it, other pure-dance Limón works, crafted along similar principles, look repetitive, as "Psalm" did.

"Psalm," originally made in 1967, restaged by Maxwell in 2002, felt not only unnecessary but crushingly self-important, with a punishing, clanging new score by Jon Magnussen, which Maxwell commissioned for her version. (This, and all the music, was recorded, and over-amplified. Better to have had an evening of silence than what bellowed through the speakers.) The dancers were dressed in the color of wet cement. Thickening, impenetrable mass was the overriding image.