He’s Busy Helping Others Watch Their Steps : UCI’s McKayle Tunes Jose Limon Dancers for Tribute to Kahlo

Writing about music, Frank Zappa once said, is like dancing about architecture.

Yet tonight, the Jose Limon Dance Company will be dancing about a painter. Donald McKayle’s “Sombra y Sol (Images of Frida Kahlo)” focuses on a moment of intense contrasts at the bullfights as a metaphor for Kahlo’s life and often tragic circumstances.

Despite the contrasts (the title translates “shadow and sun”), little about the work is black and white.

“The piece has allegorical references in terms of . . . all aspects of Kahlo’s painting,” says McKayle, 65, the UC Irvine professor who last year was appointed the Limon company’s artistic mentor and resident choreographer. “The events of her life, being confined to her bed for so long. . . . [But] it’s difficult in dance to be finite. If you try to do that with dance, you play to its weaknesses.”

The program, which celebrates Cinco de Mayo and the company’s 50th anniversary, includes three works by the group’s namesake.

Limon’s revered classic “The Moor’s Pavane” draws its inspiration from Othello and is set to music by Henry Purcell. “La Malinche,” based on Limon’s memories of Mexican fiestas, tells the story of Princess Malintzin, whose spirit inspired the Mexican natives to victory over the conquistadors. “A Choreographic Offering” is a tribute to Doris Humphrey, Limon’s mentor and the company’s first artistic director, set to Bach’s “A Musical Offering.”

Aaron Copland’s “Danzon Cubano” and “Three Latin American Sketches” provide the musical thrust for McKayle’s work.

Limon was born in Culiacan, Mexico, in 1908. When he was 7, his family moved to Arizona, then to Los Angeles. Limon eventually made his way to New York, where he founded America’s first modern-dance company. He died in 1972; the troupe continued under Humphrey. Today, it is the country’s oldest repertory company.

And to think some folks want to put a fence around America.

“Jose Limon, a major U.S. artist born in Mexico, is cause for celebration when there is so much talk in the other direction, so much bad talk about Mexico and California,” McKayle says. “That bad talk needs to be put in its proper perspective. It needs to be defused.”

The performance will be part of the 14-member company’s residency at UC Irvine, which began Thursday and continues through May 18.

Carla Maxwell, the Limon’s artistic director since 1978, studied with McKayle as a teenager when he had his own company in New York (other youngsters under his tutelage included Alvin Ailey, Eliot Feld and Lar Lubovitch). McKayle gave up the company in 1969 when he came to California to choreograph for television.

Maxwell invited McKayle to work with the Limon troupe as part of the National Dance Residency Program set up by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. After the succession of female directors that came after Limon’s death, she said she was eager to have a male presence in the company once again.

McKayle has scheduled a series of residencies with the company at campuses in California and New York. In Irvine, he’ll focus on a group of six students, the Etude Ensemble, all of whom he considers to have professional potential. Meanwhile, the Limon dancers will rehearse a new work by McKayle, “Heartbeats.”

Learning Limon repertory is only one of the students’ goals. “Young dancers have their own image about what it is to be in a professional company, but it’s theoretical,” McKayle says. “I’m going to apprentice them, pair the students with the Limon dancers and have them follow them around throughout the day. I cannot take the students out of psychology or chemistry classes, but otherwise they’ll go wherever the dancers go.

“I think this will be of great benefit to the company and students. As to what those benefits might be, I’ll let them tell me. To teach is to learn again.”

These are not the sorts of activities listed in the UCI class catalog, McKayle notes. “I’m an artistic mentor, I have these students, people say we’re a research institute. What is research in the arts? Here’s one example.”

* The Limon Dance Company will present works by Jose Limon and Donald McKayle tonight at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. 8 p.m. $6-$18. (714) 854-4646, or Ticketmaster, (714) 740-2000.