There Is a Time
Choreographed by José Limón
Music by Norman Dello Joio
Do you recognize this phase? “To everything, there is a season and a time for every purpose under the sun." It begins a passage from the biblical book of Ecclesiastes that has inspired countless artists for literally thousands of years. In 1956, José Limón, already a Cultural Ambassador for the United States (along with the eponymous company he founded with Doris Humphrey), to a world that was still recuperating from the devastation of WWII, produced his own breath-taking choreographic response to that classic summation of human existence.
This is what Limón wrote about the work: “A circle, endless with no beginning and no end, appears as a symbol of time and timelessness. That is the theme from which emerge other circles like variations on the initial theme. These are in turn joyful, lyrical, somber, violent, but ever recur to the circular time motif to remind the spectator that the great opposites: birth-death, love-hate, etc., are contained and endured in time.” The modern dance trail-blazer engaged Norman Dello Joio to write an orchestral score to accompany the work. Titled “Meditations on Ecclesiastes,” it went on to win the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for musical composition. With a pedigree of this magnitude, There Is a Time has rightly earned its place on the list of Limón masterpieces.
Artistic Director Dante Pulieo has revived this work during the pandemic because of the timely theme. It strikes right at the heart. The work will be in the Limón Dance Company’s active repertoire for at least the next 18 months—and there is even a splendid new virtual version filmed at Kaatsbaan Culture Park in December 2020.