‘The Joffrey + Ballet in the U.S.’ Tells a Story Bigger Than Itself

Caedra Scott-Flaherty, Observer 

More than just a show about ballet, this exhibition explores dance in New York and L.A. and Chicago, culture and counterculture and how art can preserve history and shape the future.

In 2017, the Joffrey Ballet gave the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts close to a thousand bankers boxes overflowing with more than sixty years’ worth of correspondence, costumes, props and posters, plus thousands of reels and microfilms. It was the largest archive the New York Public Library had received in ten years. Linda Murray, curator of the library’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division, said it took three days to pack up everything from the Joffrey Tower in Chicago, but it was worth it. “It’s really exciting to be able to bring that part of history back,” Murray told Observer, “because it’s a company that I think is really underrepresented.”

Here in New York City, we talk a lot about New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, but in many ways, the Joffrey (which also originated in the city) is the quintessential American ballet company. It was the first to perform at the White House and on television, the first to be featured on the cover of TIME Magazine and in a major motion picture (Robert Altman’s The Company) and the first to perform to rock and roll. It was rankless and inclusive, bicoastal and Midwestern. The story of the Joffrey runs alongside the broader story of the rise and fall and rebirth of ballet in the U.S., and yet it is seldom told.

Murray was eager to show off the depth of the treasures in the newly acquired archive and knew that Dr. Julia Foulkes, whom she had worked with on the 2018 exhibition Voice of My City: Jerome Robbins and New York, would be the ideal curator. Foulkes spent a year and a half gathering and organizing materials with the help of Nicole Duffy, former Joffrey company artist and current director and repetiteur of The Gerald Arpino Foundation, and the result is the large-scale exhibition The Joffrey + Ballet in the U.S., on view at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center through March 1, 2025.

The exhibition is organized around several questions that the Joffrey and the dance world at large have long grappled with: Who makes ballet, and who is it for? What should a ballet company perform? How should a ballet company be supported financially? What will ballet look like in the future?

The Joffrey has always been uniquely poised to think about these questions because its journey has been neither smooth nor traditional. While the world-renowned company (now led by artistic director Ashley Wheater MBE) known for its individuality and vast repertoire is financially secure and a beloved Chicago cultural institution, this was not always the case.

Robert Joffrey (born Abdullah Jaffa Bey Khan) was born in 1930 in Seattle, Washington to a Pashtun Muslim father from Afghanistan and a Catholic mother from Italy. He suffered from childhood asthma and bowed legs and started attending dance classes above his family’s restaurant to ease his ailments. He quickly fell in love with dance and, by age 11, knew he wanted to lead his own dance company one day. Joffrey made his performance debut in 1949 with the French choreographer Roland Petit and his Ballet de l’Opéra National de Paris, and then opened his own ballet school in 1953 where he became a beloved teacher. In 1956, he co-founded the Robert Joffrey Theater Ballet with partner Gerald Arpino (born Gennaro Peter Arpino on Staten Island, New York in 1923) who came to dance later in life but was an exquisite dancer. Joffrey remained in the city to teach and run his school while the company’s original six dancers (Arpino, Dianne Consoer, Brunilda Ruiz, Glen Tetley, Beatrice Tompkins and John Wilson) toured the country, performing in small theaters and school auditoriums and gymnasiums. “It was about bringing ballet to people who might never have seen it before,” Foulkes told Observer. “That was very much the mission of Joffrey and of the company more broadly.”

The exhibition moves visitors through a series of rooms from these scrappy early days on the road to the company’s deeply rooted present moment.

One highlight is the room titled “What Does a Ballet Company Perform?” which focuses on several company works that pushed the boundaries of what a ballet company—or any dance company—could do. Behind a beaded curtain is what Foulkes called an “immersive experience” of Astarte (1967), one of Joffrey’s most daring works, considered the first multimedia production of its kind. The original psychedelic rock ballet was a duet that featured both pre-recorded and live film footage projected onto the stage and a rock band (Crome Syrcus) in the pit. Astarte was a sensation and made the cover of TIME, Life and the New York Times Magazine (as well as an unforgettable spread in Playboy)—all on display. Beside these images are video excerpts of Arpino’s erotic Light Rain (1981), Twyla Tharp’s genre-defying Deuce Coupe (1973) and Anna Sokolow’s jazzy Opus ‘65 (1965).

Another highlight—particularly when seen in juxtaposition to the rest of the exhibit—is the room “Reconstructing the Past.” Joffrey wanted to present new innovative work, but he was also interested in reconstructing the masterworks of the early 20th Century. “Joffrey was committed to the idea that to imagine a future for ballet that was new and relevant, you needed to put on these incredible works of the past,” Foulkes explained. “One that was not an homage so much as a way to think about your company and dance in a longer history and how it could possibly push forward again.” This room is dedicated to the company’s 1967 revival of Kurt Jooss’ anti-war piece The Green Table (1932) as well as two works from the Ballets Russes: the 1973 revival of Leonide Massine’s multimedia art ballet Parade (1917) and the 1987 reconstruction of Vaslav Nijinsky’s avant-garde Le Sacre du Printemps (1913). On display—among many other historical delights—are the masks from The Green Table, the cubist costume designed by Picasso for Parade and video footage from the company’s performance of Le Sacre du Printemps.

Read the full Observer article here.