The Limón Dance Company’s 80th anniversary celebration at The Joyce Theatre, October 6-11, 2026 bridges legacy and innovation through landmark new work commissions and powerful cultural partnerships, solidifying the company as one of the most vital voices within the landscape of American and global dance.
The program kicks off with José Limón’s 1958 Mazurkas, featuring live piano accompaniment and performed in its entirety for the first time since 1964. Born from his journey to Poland after World War II, Limón crafts a world of exuberant movement and rich musicality as a tribute to his dancers and the indomitable vitality he witnessed abroad.
The program closes with the 2025 commission of Aszure Barton’s Join, created in collaboration with Grammy-nominated composer Ambrose Akinmusire. Together, they take José Limón's vivid, poetic description of a lost Doris Humphrey work and create a new world of spellbinding movement and transcendent storytelling.
Live Design chats with the company's technical manager, lighting designer Corey Whittemore, about this landmark season.
Live Design: How is the company organized from a technical point of view - fully equipped rehearsal studio? Own any of their own sound or lighting gear or use all in-house or rented gear at venues and on tour?
Corey Whitmore: The rehearsal studios at Dance Theatre of Harlem are all equipped with sound systems but no theatrical lighting equipment. We don’t own any of our own lighting or sound equipment. When we are on tour we only travel with a Bluetooth speaker, a couple iPads, the costumes, and scenery if any of the pieces have it. We use all in house lighting and sound equipment at each venue we travel to. Some pieces do require a supplemental rental by the venue such as hazer or strip lights but we try to make sure we are going to venues that will have a plot that will work for the program that we are bringing to them.
LD: How do you work with the various external designers - lighting, sound, video, costumes, etc...
CW: I like to make sure that the designers have a copy of our rep plot and all the technical information we’ve received from the venue that the piece they’re working on will premier in. Lighting designers will often come in and watch rehearsals and they’ll communicate their needs for specific colors, specials, or specific effects. The choreographer usually communicates directly with their composer during the rehearsal process to make sure that everything they need makes it into the music. If there are any specific needs regarding live music like there was last year that will usually come from someone directly involved with programming such as Dante Puleio, artistic director, or Logan Frances Kruger, associate artistic director. I personally will look for moments in the piece that look like they require additional amplification such as stomping, body percussion, or vocalizing so that I can make sure the venue adds additional microphones to pick that up. Beyond that I just make sure they send me their music as a .wav file. I haven’t had the pleasure of working with a video designer at this company yet but if I were to work with one, I would make sure I understand what their needs are as far as projection is concerned and then means they hope to have to playback that content. If it’s all going to be on QLab most places we go are perfectly capable of accommodating that but if they needed a specific media server that would become a much more involved conversation. As for costumes, Deborah Corrales, general manager, and Olivia Zacchia, wardrobe manager, communicate their needs with the costume designers and the designers themselves will often work with people they know to construct the costumes.
LD: For the 80th anniversary season at The Joyce, is there a rep plot for the lighting - who creates that and in conjunction with the LDs?
CW: I am the one who makes the light plot for any given engagement. Since we are technically not premiering a new piece, I don’t necessarily have to share the plot with anyone. However, on this show I did send it to the designer of Join, Burke Brown, as he will be joining us briefly to revisit his piece before its produced at The Joyce. Since Join premiered in a venue with a light plot so much different than what we usually have to work with, we had to immediately start thinking about how we could convert this into something we know venues we go to will be able to achieve. We were taking that piece to Spoleto Festival only a week after it premiered and we had to submit a plot to them months in advance of the premiere. Join had been tech'ed at 92NY one year before it premiered so I took that file and looked at the rough Augment3d model they have for the space and discerned the rough focus of each preset and tracked all that information throughout the piece. From there I attributed those systems we have in the rep plot and determined which presets needed to be specials. I also worked in some extra moving lights to ensure we would have enough variability when we finally took it to Spoleto in case anything would change when we premeired it. Now that we’re at The Joyce and we’ve done it a few more times we’re trying to really solidify this into something we can reliably repeat without the need for extra coverage like we needed at Spoleto Festival.
LD: Who recreates the lighting for the legacy works? Do they need to be updated to take into account today's lighting technology, which is certainly a far cry from 80 years ago?
CW: Either myself, or whoever is the lighting supervisor at the time, is responsible for recreating the lighting for legacy works. Sometimes it can be difficult to find information on when some pieces were originally performed or even when they were last performed. In those cases I’ll collate all the information I can find on the piece and read the program notes and other materials they have written for previous performances. I’ll try to stay faithful to any important themes or moments if I otherwise may not have the exact information on how it was achieved in the past. It is also helpful to hear more context about the piece from either Dante or Logan. For Mazurkas, when there was a moment that may not have been emotionally resonant Logan was able to share a lot more context surrounding that particular vignette that led us to a much better solution. Othertimes we may not be performing it under the same conditions as we otherwise would have wanted for the piece. For example, we hadn’t done La Malinche in awhile and that piece wanted a cyc to give it the feeling of being outdoors, but because the of the venue we were at and the program that it was a part of we weren’t able to accommodate that particular detail so we had to come up with other ways to make sure this core idea was conveyed in the lighting even though this wasn’t how the original lighting design was executed.
LD: What are the technical challenges in mounting a season like this - do you have your own tech staff - how do you interact with the crew at The Joyce?
CW: Outside of Bill Schaffner, stage manager, Olivia, and myself we do not have any additional technical staff. We will speak with Jeff Segal, the production manager at The Joyce, about all our needs and he will convey them all to his crew and make any recommendations about how we should approach the program in their space. In the month prior we will communicate with him and the lighting supervisor if there are any adjustments we make to the plot after our offsite tech time. On the day of it is mostly about executing the plan we’ve made up to this point. I would say the biggest challenge for this particular season is making sure that Join will feel as it was originally intended with the plot that I’ve created for it, but having Burke there to look at the design will certainly help with that.
LD: How long is the load-in and how much tech time is there before opening night?
CW: While we are at The Joyce we have one day to load in, focus the lights, and review the cues. The next day we have to tech the show and perform that same evening. With such a fast turn around its important to be as prepared as possible. We will sometimes tech the performance at another venue in the city to give us time to work out what we need from all the cues. The plot at the other venues is often not quite what we are going to get at The Joyce but we use our time there to work out what we need from the cues, the timing, and the overall structure.