27 SEPTEMBER 1957, Page 17

Didactic Strain

IT was perhaps inevitable that so un- compromisingly American an enter- prise as the Jose Limon Dance Company (who have been appearing at Sadler's Wells) should have so many works whose scenarios bristled' with Whitanesque utterances, or which explained noth- ing that was not instantly obvious in the dancing. This didactic strain is part of the heritage from Isadora Duncan—an offshoot of that New England puritan streak which presupposes that all forms of communication rest on a teacher- pupil relationship.

The company had a cool welcome from both public and critics : not for nothing are we aware of our country's contribution to the twentieth- century ballet renaissance which has imbued us with an unshakable scepticism towards any sort of dancing based on fresh thinking about problems of movement and expression.

The company's style derives—as do all Ameri- can 'Modern' dance styles—from the eclectic methods of the Denishawn School in California; more effectively than any other group, this one uses a technique in which basic ballet steps and torso movements are blended with contemporary stylisations of Indian, Javanese and Japanese body and arm movements for dancing. They have a wonderful lightness—although, in common with other Moderns, they make positive use of weight and mass and do not spurn the floor; for the ballet-addict the oddest feature of the style is. the almost constant lack of integration between steps and leg movements, and the motions and placing of arms and head. But in a short season one has seen too little of the repertoire to know if this is a feature of all the choreography.

Most of the works (one regrets that publicity pressures have driven this group to call their works 'ballets') are by Doris Humphrey, whose strongest bent is for lyrical expression, her dance dramas frequently lacking firm co-ordination

between inovement and characterisation. Limon arranges most of the other numbers, and his The Traitor is a triumphant dance communication of the story of Christ's disciples. Other subjects are based on Mexican legend, a Lorca poem, a Eugene O'Neill play, Shakespeare's Othello; decor is almost non-existent and—as with Graham's and other Modern groups—light is used with splendid imaginative and technical control. If Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig have not made much impression yet on our dramatic theatre, their theories of lighting have been expanded so that this company (and the Jooss Ballets) can create spatial, atmospheric and pictorial illusion with light such as exist nowhere else in the Western Theatre.

At the Royal Festival Hall, a Bulgarian State Ensemble of 'folk artists' dance, sing, play weird instruments to fine effect; the female choir was silvery in tone and perfectly in rhythm always, creating a vivid impression of the violent beauty of these songs as they must sound when heard under proper conditions. The dances, as usual, are limited in pattern though the males' unconquer- able vigour and positive rhythm give them an impression of ruthless dynamism. Simple staging was a help rather than a hindrance, the clothes having a richness which one suspects results from a generous helping of gilt on top of the ginger- bread of peasantish finery. It was good, again, to hear the rebec in its almost unchanged primitive form, and to find that Scotland holds no monopoly of fine bagpipe-playing. A.'V. COTON