Performer solo dancer with Ballet Hispanico of NYC, Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble, and José Limón Dance Company, he is currently a teacher and choreographer working in the America, Europe, and Asia. His assistant in the creative and pedagogical process is Blanka Czasny, with whom he has collaborated for several years.
Shifting Roots – Alegado Movement Language – a technique created with the intention of clarifying the similarities but also the differences in José Limón’s technique.
Joe Alegado – the author of the Shifting Roots technique – after dancing with José Limón’s dance company in the early 1980s, continued to teach Limón’s method in his own classes. The natural musicality of falling and returning, the awareness of breath in movement, and the relationship between weight and gravity inherent in the Limón technique were qualities that created a sense of home for Alegado.
But these same elements were also the source of his own creativity and movement exploration. With each passing year, more and more of Alegado’s own somatic history began to emerge in his movement creations – from his past athletic activity to his general outlook on life to his discovery of ways to express the human condition in all its strengths and weaknesses.
In his creative work, he has focused on the work of the hands. Simple hand gestures gave rise to streams of hand movements that were always in sync with a core guided by the force of the pelvis moving through space.
Alegado’s movement language is in a constant state of growth. From its beginnings in Limón’s concepts and principles of movement to its ever-expanding movement explorations, Shifting Roots is in a constant creative process.
Performer solo dancer with Ballet Hispanico of NYC, Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble, and José Limón Dance Company, he is currently a teacher and choreographer working in the America, Europe, and Asia. His assistant in the creative and pedagogical process is Blanka Czasny, with whom he has collaborated for several years.
Shifting Roots – Alegado Movement Language – a technique created with the intention of clarifying the similarities but also the differences in José Limón’s technique.
Joe Alegado – the author of the Shifting Roots technique – after dancing with José Limón’s dance company in the early 1980s, continued to teach Limón’s method in his own classes. The natural musicality of falling and returning, the awareness of breath in movement, and the relationship between weight and gravity inherent in the Limón technique were qualities that created a sense of home for Alegado.
But these same elements were also the source of his own creativity and movement exploration. With each passing year, more and more of Alegado’s own somatic history began to emerge in his movement creations – from his past athletic activity to his general outlook on life to his discovery of ways to express the human condition in all its strengths and weaknesses.
In his creative work, he has focused on the work of the hands. Simple hand gestures gave rise to streams of hand movements that were always in sync with a core guided by the force of the pelvis moving through space.
Alegado’s movement language is in a constant state of growth. From its beginnings in Limón’s concepts and principles of movement to its ever-expanding movement explorations, Shifting Roots is in a constant creative process.
