Joffrey still thriving at 50
http://www.suntimes.com/special_sections/fall/sho-sunday-dance11.html
by HEDY WEISS, Dance Critic
The Chicago Sun-Times
Published September 11, 2005
This fall marks the start of celebrations for the Joffrey Ballet’s 50th anniversary season. And anyone who understands the economics, politics and artistic scrambles involved in keeping a ballet company alive in America for a half century — not to mention keeping it thriving and relevant — knows just what an achievement this anniversary signifies.
From the start, the Joffrey was a unique invention — a troupe that avoided the star policy and remained free of Russian emigre guest artists. Its founding myth (“and so we just set out in a borrowed station wagon on a national tour of one-night stands”) has much the same grass-roots status as Steppenwolf Theatre’s tale (“we were born in a Highland Park church basement”). And while the company was, during the 1960s and ’70s, the hottest multimedia-crazed classical ballet company on the New York scene, its reinvention in Chicago in the 1990s also made perfect sense.
As for its repertoire, it was always a blend: from historic revivals (founder Robert Joffrey championed the lost Diaghilev classics, as well as others from the German Expressionist Kurt Jooss to Britain’s Frederick Ashton); to the eclectic ballets of co-founder and current artistic director Gerald Arpino; to Twyla Tharp’s twist on classicism, “Deuce Coupe,” set to the music of the Beach Boys — a hybridization that seems far from shocking now but was rule-breaking when it debuted in 1973.
The Joffrey’s fall 2005 season at the Auditorium Theatre (Oct. 19-30) will feature three intriguingly different works. To start, there’s a revival of “The Dream,” Ashton’s beguiling interpretation of Shakespeare’s romantic comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that displays the choreographer’s sublime gift for characterization. The remount is being overseen by Anthony Dowell, who created the role of the haughty King Oberon when he was a star of the Royal Ballet. Also on the bill will be “Return to a Strange Land,” a trio of loss and yearning set to a solo piano piece by Leos Janacek, and created in 1975 by the masterful Netherlands-based choreographer Jiri Kylian (whose work is most often seen in Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s repertoire), and a revival of Arpino’s “Celebration,” set to music by Shostakovich, and evoking the wild spirit of Slavic folk dance.
A remount of the full-length “Romeo & Juliet” by John Cranko will run Feb. 15-26, and a pop-music-themed season, April 26-May 7, will include Tharp’s “Deuce Coupe,” as well as a new work by Donald Byrd set to the songs of various Motown artists, and a revival of Laura Dean’s “Sometimes It Snows,” from “Billboards,” and set, of course, to the music of the man now known as Prince Rogers Nelson. “The Nutcracker” will be back for the holidays (Dec. 14-24).
All performances are at the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress. Tickets: (312) 902-1500. And note: The Joffrey is committed to using live music whenever possible, but don’t expect Prince or the remaining Beach Boys to show up.