Limón Dance Company’s Premier Revival Performance of "The Traitor"

-- SEPTEMBER 7, 2007 IN BATTERY PARK-- 

AT EVENING STARS

The Limón Dance Company Presents

A Work About Men and Betrayal

NEW YORK: Under the direction of Clay Taliaferro and Artistic Director Carla Maxwell, The Limón Dance Company will present the revival of The Traitor, one of modern dance’s most significant works of the 1950s created for a cast of eight men. It will be performed September 7, 2007 at the Evening Stars program in Battery Park.  Evening Stars, organized by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and The Joyce Theater, will offer the performance free to the public at 7:30 p.m.

The Traitor was Limón’s response to the McCarthy hearings and the climate of betrayal that haunted the arts and entertainment fields during this period.    Limón used Sholem Asch’s novel, The Nazarene, as the impetus for this re-telling of the Christ and Judas story.  Against a musical score of violence, passion and tenderness, the tragedy of Judas is portrayed as if it were taking place today. 

Like the arch-betrayer Judas Iscariot, the protagonist in this dance drama symbolizes all those tormented men who, loving too much, must hate; those men who to our own day must turn against their loyalties, friends and fatherlands, and in some fearful cataclysm of the spirit, betray them to the enemy. 

José Limón (1908-1972), choreographer of The Traitor, expressed his need to make this piece as a way to express his observations of a 1950s world in The Julliard Review.  His experiences weren’t new then; they aren’t new today. 

“The tragedy of Judas Iscariot has been very close to me during the last few years, for the reason that there have been so many traitors around us, on both sides of the titanic antagonism.  I have been affected by their accounts of treachery, and their confessions and self-justifications.  I have great pity for these unhappy human beings, and for the anguish of spirit which they must experience and the torment in which they must live.  And when I feel something very keenly, I have to make a dance about it.”

Limón’s “great pity for these unhappy human beings” is portrayed, today, by Francisco Ruvalcaba; he dances the role of The Traitor.  Ruvalcaba had this to say about the work and his feelings while dancing the role:

“When I dance the role of The Traitor, I feel very much like he does.  It sort of spills into me, that feeling of isolation and being apart from the group.  In the piece, I betray The Leader, the Jesus figure.  I betray The Leader because I feel abandoned, and because The Leader, I feel, didn’t keep true to the vision.  After my betrayal, The Leader and his followers drift away from me, leaving me to literally dance most of the piece alone.  I’m left to look at him from afar.  This makes me feel isolated, and it makes me despise him -- but it also deepens my love for him.   It intensifies my need and feeling for his attention and approval.  It makes me want to injure what I love most.”

“These feelings are true for many men, even today, I feel.  When a man overreacts to something, or when he pushes away someone he loves, he finds himself set aside, often for good.  It really hurts him when that happens – and it’s a self-inflicted hurt.  This piece is one of the best ways I know to present this in a way that can touch a man’s center while he watches the performance.”

The Traitor was staged and directed by Clay Taliaferro .  Taliaferro has had an extensive involvement with American dancing earning an international reputation as an award-winning performer, teacher and choreographer.  Currently emeritus professor of dance at Duke University, he was a principal dancer and guest artist with the José Limón Dance Company for many years, served as Assistant Artistic Director to Ruth Currier, and danced in The Traitor.   

Carla Maxwell, Artistic Director since 1978, made the decision to reconstruct the piece and oversaw its rebirth.  Maxwell was inspired by how it progressed, because it provided a window into Limón’s intentions for the piece, as well as into aspects of his choreography that became fresh for her.

“This work is José at the pinnacle of his choreographic compositions.  I believe that The Traitor is among the greatest choreographic works of the twentieth century, and certainly ranks amongst Limón’s best and most important offerings. … [it is] one of the most complex pieces ever composed by José Limón. … Every aspect of the piece works in consort to realize the vision of the story.  As subject matter it could not be more timely ... The marriage of music, gesture, compositional form and theatrical excitement are so inexorably interwoven, that what we see is a procession of living paintings emblazoned on the stage.”

              Limón’s The Traitor was first performed August 19, 1954 in Palmer Auditorium at Connecticut College, New London, CT, by the José Limón Dance Company.