The most recent addition is Drexel University's year-old program, which this weekend will host its first major dance event, a conference celebrating the centennial of dancer/choreographer José Limón.

Limón - born in Culiacán, Mexico, in 1908 - moved to California with his family as a child, first studying painting, then, in New York in the late '20s, turning to dance. After serving in the Army during World War II, he formed his own company; it became one of America's most respected during the Cold War era, when he and his dancers toured South America and Europe as a cultural ambassadors for the State Department.

Drexel's dance program, begun last year, joins those at Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, Temple and University of the Arts in offering a variety of degrees in the field of dance in this region. The Limón event is being done in partnership with Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore.

Miriam Giguere, head of Drexel's program, said of the conference, "The Limón centennial created a perfect storm for this conference."

She said that Dance Advance, a local organization that supports dance initiatives, "brought together the heads of area dance departments to brainstorm a dance symposium here. As it happened to be the Limón centennial and many institutions were planning reconstructions and events, it seemed natural to pool as much as possible into one event.

"When Randy Swartz announced he was bringing the company to Annenberg" last December through his contemporary presentation series Dance Celebration, "we arranged for [Limón Company member] Ryoko Kudo to train 12 of our Drexel students to dance Limón's Choreographic Offering in that concert."

The Limón conference began in October with a series of events leading up to the December performances; it culminates Sunday and Monday with papers, videos, master classes and workshop presentations. On Monday evening the Philadelphia company DanceFusion, along with Drexel and Bryn Mawr students and dancers from the Limón Institute, will perform reconstructions of Limón's Barren Sceptre and There Is a Time. The performances are open to the public.

Philadelphia's Limón connection includes Ann Vachon, a former Limón company dancer who in 1981 founded her own company here, Dance Conduit, to present reconstructions of Limón works. Vachon until recently taught at Temple's dance department; she is currently director of the Limón Institute, the company's New York school. At the conference, she will show her award-winning documentary on Limón, A Life Beyond Words.

Although Drexel's Giguere had danced with several companies, it was her experience with Dance Conduit that gave her an appreciation for Limón technique. "Its drama and humanity still resonate for me," she said.

A Penn graduate who took her doctorate in dance from Temple last year, Giguere is Drexel's first dance program director. She has been at the university since 1997.

"There had been dance classes at Drexel for about 30 years," she said, but, as at Penn, dance was an extracurricular activity with no degree program.

The changes began in 1998, when Drexel took over Hahnemann's dance/movement therapy department. At that point, Giguere said, "I began developing and writing this curriculum with the collaboration of the faculty. We now offer a B.S. degree that leads to two graduate programs - a master's in elementary education or in dance/movement therapy."

The program has grown to serve 150 students in dance classes with 20 to 25 students taking dance as a minor. Twelve new dance majors will begin the program next fall.

Other local programs have moved in very different directions. Dance at Swarthmore also evolved over many years until it became a separate department, offering a degree in dance, in 1988. Sharon Friedler, Stephen Lang Professor of Performing Arts, has been its sole director.

"The Swarthmore dance programs have a world-dance focus. Our study-abroad programs are an integral part of our program," she said. "Our students have been studying abroad for years, first in Poland, and now in Ghana, India, Italy, Japan and Northern Ireland. Their experiences have won them Fulbrights, Henry Luce and Watson Fellowships to study further abroad. Some of those students have gone on to graduate studies in dance."

The other Limón conference cosponsor, Bryn Mawr, has a dance heritage that extends back more than 100 years but was not instituted as a separate department until Linda Caruso Haviland took charge in 1984. She is now director of dance and chair of the Bryn Mawr arts program.

For the Limón conference, Bryn Mawr dancers will perform The Waldstein Sonata, to Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 21. "Limón began the work in 1971, the year before he died," Haviland said.