Missa Brevis

José Limón created this beautiful, emotional ballet after hearing Zoltan Kodaly’s “Missa Brevis in Tempore Belli” (“Short Mass in Time of War”), a score written at the end of World War II. The ballet’s backdrop is reminiscent of the scene in which Kodaly’s score first premiered—a bombed-out church in Budapest in 1945. Limón’s danced mass, like the music, is about affirmation and rebirth, and the moving choreography celebrates the human spirit overcoming hardships.