Apollo, the Beach Boys and a Soupçon of Agitprop

A generation or two of New York dancegoers grew up with the Joffrey Ballet at City Center, the company’s home until it decamped for Chicago in 1995. The vivid, distinctive presences

of Joffrey dancers of the 1960s and ’70s worked indelible magic, as did the pertness for which the company was known and occasionally dismissed, despite the technical skills of many of those

bouncy charmers. New York briefly saw the Joffrey in 2004 in the Lincoln Center Festival’s celebration of Frederick Ashton and his ballets, and its perfect, madcap production of Ashton’s “Wedding

Bouquet” is still being talked about.

On Friday night metropolitan-area audiences had a chance to see more of the Joffrey Ballet, in three typically wide-ranging repertory works, at the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts on

Long Island. The company has clearly grown and flourished as the big kid on the block in Chicago, without the New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater elbowing it at either side.

The dancers have grown with the times without losing the Joffrey’s trademark freshness. This achievement is probably, in part, that of their balletmasters, Charthel Arthur and Mark Goldweber,

two unforgettable early- and middle-period Joffrey dancers. Gerald Arpino, who founded the troupe with Robert Joffrey, took over as director after Joffrey’s death in 1988, and his associate

directors are former company dancers Cameron Basden and Adam Sklute. The Joffrey Ballet has remained a family affair.

Friday’s three ballets – George Balanchine’s “Apollo,” Twyla Tharp’s “Deuce Coupe” and Kurt Jooss’s “Green Table” – were all well danced. But what stood out,

along with the historical context of “Deuce Coupe” and “The Green Table,” were dancers whose performances were as quietly individual as their presences and ways of moving.

Fabrice Calmels as the young god in “Apollo,” staged for the company by Mr. Goldweber, had something of the innocence and intensely dramatic approach of Jacques d’Amboise, a notable

City Ballet interpreter in the late 1950s.

Mr. Calmels grew onstage from a big, disoriented just-born god to a connoisseur of goddesses and a divinity with a sense of mission. The chief muse he unhesitatingly chose was a Terpsichore

danced with fierce, fine-scaled clarity by Kathleen Thielhelm, in a lead cast completed by April Daly (Calliope) and Valerie Robin (Polyhymnia).

“Apollo,” often performed in New York, is coals in Newcastle, but “Deuce Coupe” is an important part of the Joffrey’s heritage and mission. Commissioned by Joffrey in 1973

and set to songs by the Beach Boys, this was the first mainstream crossover ballet. (The tangy but controversial graffiti backdrop is missing from this touring production.)

Heather Aagard was the persistent classicist in Ms. Tharp’s dazzlingly hot-footed, slippery choreography, restaged by William Whitener. Julianne Kepley was her deft alter ego, with the impressive

Mauro Villanueva a seamless blend of ballet and Tharp-dance. His technical ease and airily opening arms were a special pleasure in “Matrix I,” the first of 19 brief, fast-paced segments.

And the endearingly tall and loping Ms. Robin brought back fond memories of the Tharp dancer Rose Marie Wright.

“The Green Table,” staged by Anna Markard, was a shocking novelty when Joffrey introduced it – and Mr. Jooss, a German Expressionist choreographer then largely unknown to American

audiences – to New York in 1967. The insidiously warring diplomats who open this antiwar ballet, created in 1932, look sadly innocent today. But the Joffrey dancers managed to bridge the gap

between light, fast, comparatively soft-edged ballet performance of the 21st century and the dance equivalent of starkly imposing political poster art.

Michael Levine’s Death suggested the crudity and terrifying implacability of Mr. Jooss’s conception, as well as its fleeting moments of austere morality and tenderness. Mr. Levine’s inescapable

gaze had an astonishing potency, whether fixed on the next of his onstage prey or out into the audience. Other standouts included Ms. Kepley’s fiercely focused revolutionary Woman, Maia Wilkins’s

gentle, fearful Old Mother, Suzanne Lopez’s rag-doll Young Girl, John Gluckman’s skittering Profiteer and Temur Suluashvili’s shining Standard Bearer.

The fine lead cast was completed by Patrick Simoniello (Old Soldier) and Mr. Villanueva (Young Soldier). Paul Lewis and Mungunchimeg Buriad drove the dancers along with their playing of F.

A. Cohen’s piano score.