To Jose Clemente Orozco

Lester Horton created this duet about the Mexican socialist muralist in 1953 with Carmen de Lavallade as an original cast member. Alvin Ailey remounted the work after Horton’s death. Mr. Ailey originally planned to tour the work with his company in 1962 during a tour of Southeast Asia, but the State Department rejected the work because, as Mr. Ailey wrote, Mr. Orozco “was a little left of center.” Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater staged the work in 1983. The New York Times wrote of the revival, “Orozco is typical of an entire era in modern dance in that it is an unabashed piece of social protest.”