2016 Chapters (Layout Features)

H.P.: A Lost Dance of the Americas

Garafola, Lynn

An all but forgotten ballet with music by the Mexican composer Cesar Chavez, designs by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera, and choreography by the young American dancemaker Catherine Littlefield, "H.P. (Horse Power)" was produced in Philadelphia in 1932. With its dual imagined communities, Americas of the North and the South, it was a ballet that looked ad sounded both modern and expansively American. As wrote Chavez in the souvenir program, "H.P." represented the "grand ferment of this, our American continent."