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Chapter One 9 East Fifty-Ninth Street: The Birthplace Early in the year nineteen hundred and twenty-nine I was born at 9 East Fifty-Ninth Street, New York City. My parents were Isadora Duncan and Harald Kreutzberg. They were not present at my birth. I doubt that they ever saw one other or were aware of their responsibility for my being. Presiding at my emergence into the world were my foster parents, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman. It was at their dance studio and in their classes that I was born. I had existed previously in human form for twenty years. But that existence was only a period of gestation, albeit a long one, longer than that of an elephant. My grandparents were equally illustrious. They were Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. All this constitutes an imposing pedigree and, with the exception of Harald Kreutzberg, a very American one. Duncan was born in San Francisco, St. Denis in Somerville, New Jersey, Shawn in Denver, Colorado, Humphrey in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, and Weidman in Lincoln, Nebraska. Muy americano. Muy yanqui.     The curious thing about this birth is its posthumous aspect. My "mother," a lady of considerable and conspicuous gallantry, an incurable romantic as well as one of the formidable artistic figures in Western history, had, in the process of riding off to her latest and, as it proved, her final amorous adventure (with, of all people, a garage mechanic), had her neck broken when her trailing scarf became entangled in the spokes of the rear wheels of the automobile. Her valedictory was consonant with her courageous and indomitable spirit, "Adieu, roes amis, je vais à la gloire." And there, indeed, she remains to this day. Her tragic demise took place in the fall of 1927, and since I claim to be her child and to have been born in the winter of 1929, one can only conclude that all this is one of those miracles of which only artists and philosophers are capable. Spiritually, they are fecund and procreative long after their earthly remains have returned to the native dust.     The long road to the studio on Fifty-Ninth Street had begun in another street, the Calle Rosales, the street of the roses, in the city of Culiacán, capital of the state of Sinaloa, Mexico. My carnal father, Florencio Limón, was a musician, pedagogue, conductor, and director of the State Academy of Music. He played the clarinet and cello. To this day I cannot hear the sound of either instrument without being reminded of him. My mother, in terms biological, was Francisca Traslaviña. Don Florencio was then a tall, rather handsome, and distinguished man, a widower of French and Spanish descent. Doña Francisca, a girl of sixteen when they met, came from a good bourgeois family. Her deceased father had been a schoolteacher, and her mother, Doña Flavia, was, as I recall, a rather imposing matron. The Traslaviñas had, like most Mexicans, a dash of Indian blood, which was not too apparent and which they did their best to forget. It was not considered quite nice, in those times, in respectable provincial society, to be tainted with the blood of the wild tribes of the mountains or deserts, the peons enslaved in the gigantic haciendas, or las plebes , the degraded and poverty-stricken rabble of the cities. No. The gente decente of the late Porfirian dictatorship modeled themselves after the landed aristocracy, which in turn looked to the even more exalted and prestigious nobility of the capital, which, in its turn, looked to Madrid, Paris, and Rome for its reason for being.     At some fiesta or other, my father had joined the orchestra to substitute for the cellist, absent for some reason or other. My mother was to tell us that she was present and that someone came to her with the message that el señor don Florencio would be honored and delighted to have the spray of orange blossoms she was wearing in her hair. Speechless with embarrassment, she surrendered it and spent the rest of the evening, as she waltzed by in the arms of a partner, surreptitiously glancing at her flowers jauntily fastened to the top of the cello. She remembered how prettily they vibrated with the action of the bow on the strings.     So the widower of thirty-five began courting the girl of sixteen. There was a wedding in April 1907, and punctually on January 12, 1908, I was delivered, using, fortissimo, all the power of a husky pair of lungs and kicking like a roped steer. My aunt Lupe would relate that I was un fenómeno, un monstruo de energía .     The young Francisca was further to give birth to Dora, Jesús, Estrella, who died at three months of age, the twins Juan José and Gilberto, who died almost immediately after birth, a Gilberto once again, who died at three months, and across the northern frontier, in the United States, to Florentino, Rosalva, Guadalupe, another pair of twins, one stillborn and one who survives to this day as Roberto, and finally Pedro. After Pedro the doctors advised my parents that further production would be dangerous, if not fatal, to the mother. Nevertheless, in due time she became once more pregnant (such is the voluntad de Dios ), and as the pregnancy advanced, she became subject to acute suffering, and finally after an agonized crisis, she departed this valley of tears at the age of thirty-four, leaving an inconsolable widower, a large brood of infants, and a brutally embittered firstborn.     At eighteen years of age one is vulnerable to an appalling degree. There are no weapons for defense, no experience, no wisdom, no cynicism.     Death was no stranger to me. He came early. Little Estrella I had seen in the grip of the intestinal malady that killed her when she was only three months old. She was a beautiful little girl, and I remember that she accepted suffering gently, with a sweet patience, and that laid out in her long baptismal dress, surrounded by flowers in a sky blue baby coffin, she was a lovely and breathtaking apparition. Candles were burning at the four corners of the coffin. The incomprehensible solemnity of the scene has never left me.     Death visited us soon again. He wore a different guise. The scene, the choreography, devised by this master of theater for the death of an infant had a poignant delicacy. For the death of a young man he prescribed pure melodrama, a Danse Macabre performed in a nightmare. My mother's older brother, Uncle Manuel, received a bullet in the head shortly after the opening of the battle of Cananea. It happened in the dining room of our house. It was early morning, and the family, which at the time included my visiting grandmother, my aunt Lupe, and my uncle Manuel, was at breakfast. Gunfire interrupted the meal. At first it was thought to be the sound of firecrackers. In Mexico the saints like their festivals to be full of music, processions, and fireworks. We were disabused of this idea when bullets began to shatter the windowpanes and whistle into the room. Pandemonium. My father shouted a command. Everyone hit the floor, except my gallant young uncle. He had to see what was going on and looked out the window. My father and grandmother shouted at him not to be a fool, to take cover. He laughed, I remember, and then he was hit. He fell back, and a pool of blood grew around him. My frantic grandmother crouched over him, trying to revive him. My father crawled to the bedrooms, dragging out mattresses and quilts that he threw over us for protection. Our house was on the rising slope of a hill, caught between attacking revolutionary forces and their objective, a fort held by Federals at the summit. Bullets continued to whistle through the house. At three o'clock there was a truce, and the Red Cross picked up my half-dead uncle and took him to a hospital where he subsequently died. The battle was resumed and lasted for three days and nights. It was fought with all the feral tenacity of internecine wars. I remember being awakened periodically during the night by the sound of machine guns and artillery. During a lull in the fighting we were moved to a neighbor's cellar. We lived on water, soda crackers, and chipped beef out of tins. I have long ago reconciled myself to drinking water and eating a cracker, but the sight of chipped beef brings me close to nausea. Cowering under mattresses, with the incessant sound of rifles and cannon, I first encountered fear, fear raised to the pitch of pure animal terror. I trembled uncontrollably. The bright bloody pool, congealed like a crimson halo around the head of my prostrate uncle, had a horrid and irresistible fascination. My mother, pale and ravaged with fever, covered with overcoats, shawls, and blankets, would cry out in delirium.     After three days the Federals capitulated. A white flag was raised over the ramparts of the fort. The noise ceased. The vanquished Federals marched down to surrender and were made prisoners; a number were court-martialed and fell before firing squads. Normalcy returned. The dead on the streets and in the shattered houses were removed and buried. Dead horses were towed away, and we children returned to our world, with new toys and games. A rich harvest of empty cartridges of all calibers awaited us. We were avid collectors, and traded and bartered our newfound treasures, so many of this size for so many of that. (So early in our infancy do we become entrepreneurs and traders that market values and rates of exchange seem to be part of our chromosomal equipment.) Bang, bang. "I'm a maderista , and you're a porfirista ." Bang, bang. "I'm a revolucionario , and you're a federal . And you're dead." "No, you are. I fired first." "Yes, but you didn't hit me." "I did too." "No, no." "Sí, sí."     All this was in my fifth year, in 1913, when, far away, across deserts, mountains, and oceans, in a legendary place called Europa and all unknown to me, Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, and many other magical beings were creating an enchantment that was to engulf and possess me one day. But just now, during my tempestuous and precarious gestation, the dance, my future destiny, consisted of the jarabe , the Mexican national dance, that ubiquitous, traditional expression of all that is passionately patriotic in the alma mexicana , and the Spanish jotas and fandangos , those reminders that Mexico would have been impossible without Spain and its culture, language, religion, and dominance of three centuries. In the distance, remote and mysterious, were the echoing drums of the Indian dances.     Our world fell apart. Chaos reigned over northwestern Mexico, as indeed over the rest of the Republic. The Limón family had moved to the northern mineral --or mining town--of Cananea, where my father held the post of director of the Academia de Música for the state of Sonora. His duties were to direct the training of instrumentalists for municipal bands and orchestras and to conduct these at public concerts in the kiosk in the Plaza Central. He was also conductor of the orchestra at the local theater. I would on occasion accompany him to rehearsals and performances. The theater served all purposes. For a provincial copper mining center there was a surprising amount of theatrical activity. There were concerts, dramas, zarzuelas , and the miraculous cinematógrafo . There were music-hall nights, and on these I remember glittering Spanish dancers, costumed in sequined iridescence, with high combs and crimson roses nestling in sumptuous black coiffures. The electrifying pound of castanets, the magnetic intricacy of the steps and figurations, the verve of the taconeado , the flurries and cascades of ruffled petticoats, all these moved me to a pitch of excitement that I could neither understand nor explain. The Iberian genius for containing volcanic fires under glacial formality would not become known to me until much later. My origins were punctuated by the pluck of guitars and the sound of the cante jondo .     One unforgettable night a beautiful girl, a fairy, a butterfly, appeared. She was suspended in midair by an unseen wire. In each hand she held a wand from which hung incredibly long draperies of the sheerest gauze or chiffon that were somehow attached to her body as well. Waltzing, she waved the wands and created magical patterns and undulations, while colored lights played upon her. This magical vision of movement and light made an unforgettable impression on me.     A great favorite, after the Spanish bailarinas , was the ballroom dance couple. Handsome and distinguished, they performed in formal evening attire, he in tails, she in a high fashion gown with an aigrette on her coiffure. Their tango always brought down the house. Also on the bill were cancan dancers, cakewalk dancers, and Oriental dancers.     There was one dance that terrified, repelled, and fascinated me. This dance represented another facet of the Iberian inheritance and was regarded with the curious ambivalence with which a Mexican regards things Spanish. Spain means the conqueror Córtez, the destroyer and despoiler of ancient native cultures, a man wanton, cruel, and insatiable. Spain represents three centuries of subjection, the enslavement and oppression of indigenous populations, merciless and unscrupulous maltreatment, and exploitation.     But Spain is also the mother country. She gave us nuestro Señor Jesucristo and his crucifix, and his Santa Madre, nuestra Señora la santísima Virgen María, and Don Hernán Córtez, gallant and honorable Christian knight, bringer of enlightenment to benighted, idolatrous heathen; compassionate missionaries who consoled, healed, educated; and great viceroys, men of vision and humanism, whose architects gave New Spain one of the richest architectural heritages in the world.     The dance I found so fascinating was the bullfight. No sarabande, chaconne, or passacaglia surpasses the corrida de toros in its grave formality, solemnity, sober elegance, grace, and ritual. Even in provincial northern Mexico this most Spanish of dances was performed as it would be in Madrid, Seville, or Lima. All ritual must open in procession, with a formal introduction of each component. The entrance of the toreros , the picadores , and finally the matadores in order is an electrifying spectacle. Costumed in great splendor and breathtaking colors, the bullfighters evoke an age that knew how to enhance the appearance of a man. Gallant and heroic, the bullfighter was a being consecrated and set apart, performing an ancient ritual drama that would cleanse and purge us, its spectators, a man with symbolic powers, graces, and prerogatives. Moving with measured gait and sacerdotal majesty, he was a dancer in a cruel and dangerous ritual. I did not know, as I watched spellbound, that I was watching an art whose gesture and movement would influence me profoundly when I became a dancer. In composing dances, I would look back to this formative experience for guidance and inspiration.     But our world, our Hispanic world, was falling apart. My father, the exact antithesis of the warrior, was appalled and disgusted by the era's violence and lawlessness. The Academia, like many other institutions, disintegrated and disappeared. My father, with a family to support, accepted the post of director of military bands to several of the revolutionary caudillos of the north. He served by turns Alvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles, who later were elevated to the presidency of the republic. This necessitated leaving the family to accompany the generals on their campaigns. What he saw and experienced convinced him that he would have to emigrate to the United States. There was some understandable procrastination. He moved us from one northern city to another. We lived for a time in Hermosillo, then in the frontier city of Nogales, and here Death came, saw, and conquered once again. Again I was a witness. My baby brother Gilberto became very ill on the train that took us from Hermosillo north to Nogales. He cried pitifully during the long slow ride. The track had been destroyed and badly repaired. Bridges had been burned or blown up. The makeshift replacements were an ordeal to cross. The train was crowded beyond belief. People stood in the aisles. All social distinctions and barriers were forgotten. The very poor always travel inelegantly. On the aisles of the passenger coach families stood, crouched, squatted, or lay with what pathetic possessions they could carry--blankets, cooking pots, frying pans, old pieces of furniture, the inevitable cage housing a noisy parrot. Coupled to the passenger coaches were numerous freight cars replete with displaced humanity. Our caravan included the inevitable regiment of soldiers, who carried, besides their own ragged selves, their children and a total arsenal of weaponry and ammunition--rifles, carbines, machine guns, and an astonishing number of cartridge belts crisscrossed over their chests. These last lent an unexpected aura of chic to the soldiers, who comported themselves rather jauntily. Of course, in true Mexican revolutionary style, the overflow rode the roofs of the freight cars.     There was no doctor on the train. I could see my mother becoming desperate. Various ladies tried to be helpful, prescribing warm mint tea or ointment to be rubbed on the baby's chest. Nothing helped. At the far end of the coach someone played an accordion, sad, melancholy canciones . It was sunset. The sun set in pure fresh gore. My mother's face, the crying of my baby brother, my frightened sister Dora and little brother Jesús, the lost, lost train, the brutal landscape of central Sonora, harsh and arid--how the memory of this scene lies in ambush to assault and torment me when I least expect it! How I abhor the sound of an accordion!     After an eternity the exhausted train limped into Nogales. My worried father collected his spent wife and offspring and took us to a boarding house. Here, a few days later, my brother Gilberto literally suffocated to death in his mother's arms, while I stood by in helpless panic.     The counterpoint to this fugue was the execution by firing squad of a man. There was a procession, the doomed man waving away a bandage from his eyes, asking for a cigarette; my mother frantically lighting candles before the crucifix, kneeling and imploring heaven for some miraculous intercession; then, the sound of the volley and the violent desolation of a woman weeping.     There are the bright memories of Mexico. For these I am grateful. My first memory of all is of sitting naked in a tub or basin of water in a charming spot, most likely the patio of our house in Culiacán where I was born. I was splashing water on myself and on a laughing young woman, my mother. It was golden in the sunlight and green and cool in the shade. There were beautiful odors. I adored my mother, and she was very happy. I had a toy guitar.     My grandmother Flavia would have me to her house to visit her. We would have breakfast together in her patio. The place was full of wonders. There were flowers everywhere--roses, carnations, bougainvillea, tuberoses, lilies, and flowers I have never seen since. She loved to water and tend them herself. There were cages with canaries, cardinals, lovely little parrots, and other birds, and they sang in the brilliant sunlight. She would visit each cage, address each occupant in baby-talk Spanish, wish it good morning, inquire about its health and disposition, and feed it its own special breakfast. Our breakfast would consist of all manner of fruits of the tropics, oranges and bananas, mangoes and pineapples, and some delectable small fishes "sautéed to a crisp golden brown," as the cookbooks say, eggs, lovely tortillas, hot frothy chocolate, and delicious sweet rolls. In the hot afternoons, after the siesta, which my grandmother took in a bed with a net canopy to keep out the ever active and famished mosquitoes, we would stroll to the plaza and the market places, and sometimes she would buy me a toy whistle or a sweet. On our return she would read to me. Fairy tales, the Arabian Nights, strange and sometimes frightening things from the Old Testament, or about the Babe in the manger in Bethlehem, or Judas. There was no end to the fascination. Doña Flavia dressed severely, in black taffeta, with white showing only at the throat and wrists. She was my early encounter with Latin formality, austerity, and protocol, which in the conduct of human relationships take precedence over love, tenderness, intimacy, anger, hatred, and passion.     My schooling began in Culiacán. The first schoolroom was a place of confrontation with the harsh realities of this world. There was the despair of being abandoned by my parents to the cold impersonality of a stranger who wielded a terrible authority. My contemporaries were no comfort. They were also strangers and seemed intent on their own problems. I wallowed in self-pity. Our teacher was a rather stylish young woman in a white blouse and long black skirt. She was sharp and shrill of voice and short on patience. To her, stupidity was an intolerable sin, and since she was surrounded by it, since all of us miserable, cowed, first graders seemed to be gifted with it, she suffered from an acute sense of outrage that she took no pains to conceal. The alphabet was the first battle. Then came numbers and the most elementary arithmetic. G-A-T-O spells cat. Two plus two equals four. She wrote letters, words, and numbers on the blackboard. She erased, wrote again, made oral interrogations and inquisitions that ended with unspeakable embarrassment on our part and bitter sarcasm on hers. One day we were given pens and ink pots to learn to write our names. It was a disastrous move. More ink ended up on our fingers, noses, desks, trousers, and shirt fronts than on the page. She had reached the limit of her patience. She exploded violently. She began with the occupant of the first bench in my row, seizing the hapless little boy by an unruly mop of hair and giving him three or four vigorous shakes. She proceeded up the aisle, her fury mounting. I was last in the row. I saw what was in store for me. I have never since known such panic. I was paralyzed. This virago, this madwoman, finally got to me, and I was subjected to the most rude, the most shocking violence I can remember. I had a lot of hair. She made good use of it. Her name was Señorita Angé1ica.     There were other schools. In Hermosillo, at the Colegio Sonora, the teacher of the second and third grades was Señorita Bórquez, a mature, dignified lady, who was more correcta . She was a good disciplinarian, but used no violence; she made our studies interesting and sometimes a pleasure, since she would make them seem like games. She smiled, she cajoled, she teased, and we learned.     In Nogales, the fourth grade teacher, Señorita Bracamonte, was a lady of culture and charm. Her voice was low and musical. She made our studies interesting. She would discuss Córtez and Montezuma as human beings, not as monoliths or legends. Arithmetic, history, biology, geography, botany, and composition became fascinating. She introduced me to Marie Antoinette and told me sad and terrible things about her life. On one occasion, she waited until the recess period to deliver a severe but well-deserved reprimand; I will be forever grateful that she spoke to me in private. One Saturday I had occasion to visit her home. A maid admitted me to the patio. This was the first time I had ever seen a teacher, one of the remote, the august, in her private domicile. Señorita Bracamonte was sitting on a bench in a dressing gown, her long auburn hair, still damp, hanging down her back over a large bath towel. I stopped in confusion and embarrassment. Her gray eyes twinkled with amusement. She put on a mock solemnity. "Advance, señor don José . Señorita Bracamonte does not bite her pupils." We both laughed and had a very pleasant talk.     I am happy that this is one of the last memories I have of Mexico. I was about to become, with my family, an exile in a strange country. I was seven years old. I had seen and felt many things that seven-year-olds should be spared. Much of this had been incomprehensible and would not be understood until much later. But I had learned that living was a precarious and unpredictable business and that to cope with living one had to have valor --courage. And I was soon to learn that for the rest of my life I was to be a translator and conciliator. It would be my task to translate, perpetually, within myself the tongue of Castile into that of the Anglo-Saxons, to reconcile many disparate and contradictory cultural habits and ways of living, and to resolve hostilities within and around me.     This began even before we crossed the northern frontier, that formidable and awesome barrier, which, like all boundaries, separated and isolated us both physically and spiritually. Beyond this line was the norteamericano , the yanqui , the gringo . He was powerful. He spoke inglés , which was a language totally incomprehensible to those who spoke the lengua castellana or español . He had, in the middle of the last century, unjustly invaded our patria and inflicted a humiliating defeat on a weaker nation and imposed a peace of galling ignominy. His merciless avarice had deprived Mexico of the vast territories that became Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, Nevada, and heaven knows what else. He was likely to intervene at any moment in the Mexican revolution. La intervención hung over our heads like a Damoclean sword. Fear. Dread. To a seven-year-old they are palpable, sickening realities. It was a maid or a cook, I forget which, who twitted me about our imminent migration. She informed me gleefully that the gringos were very fond of cutting off the testicles of little Mexican boys and frying and eating them as a delicacy. Armed with this knowledge I came to the United States.     I had encountered English earlier. In a kitchen in Mexico I had seen a wooden box used to hold firewood. It had obviously been a container for canned stuff. In large letters along its sides read the admonition "Keep in a cool, dry place." Reading English in the Spanish manner, phonetically, is something to make Chaucer and Shakespeare roll over in their graves. I had no idea what these words meant at all. All I knew was that they were mysterious and intriguing. The only English I knew I had learned from my half-sister Julia, who had preceded us to the U.S. to a convent boarding school and on her return had taught me that "yes" meant "sí" and that no," oddly enough, meant "no."     My first, and most ignominious, because it was public, encounter with the new language was during the reading period at the Convent of the Holy Shepherd in Tucson, Arizona. A circle of little boys and girls stood around the desk occupied by Sister Cornelia. Most were blond and blue-eyed. Or so they seemed to me, one of the few dark-haired ones. These I later discovered were either Mexican like myself or strangely enough, dark-haired americanos . We held our books in our right hand. Each was to read a sentence. My turn came at last. I had by now learned to read in Spanish. The sentence, forever engraved in my memory, was "Would you like to ride in a boat?" I had no idea what it meant, but I knew I had to read it, and I did. It brought down the house. There were shrieks and howls of laughter and rolling in the aisles. With all the unsparing cruelty of children my classmates gave vent to their delight. I turned crimson with mortification. Tears of rage and humiliation blinded me. I was alone. I was surrounded by a horde of salvages and bàrbaros .     Sister Cornelia sternly called the class to order. But it was too late. The terrible knowledge had transfixed me. I was an alien. An exile. The wound inflicted that day would take many years to heal. But when wounds do not kill they form a cicatrix, which is good tough tissue. That day I resolved a number of things. One was that I would learn this impossible language, whose capricious and illogical pronunciation hadn't the remotest relation to the way it was written, better than any of those who had jeered at me. Copyright © 1999 José Limón Dance Foundation. All rights reserved.