In 2017, the Joffrey Ballet gave the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts close to a thousand bank boxes overflowing with books, costumes, props and posters, thousands of reels and small films. It was the largest archive the New York Public Library had acquired in a decade. Linda Murray, curator of the library’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division, said it took three days to collect everything from the Joffrey Tower in Chicago, but it was worth it. “It’s really exciting to be able to bring back that piece of history,” Murray told the Observer, “because it’s a company that I think is underrepresented.”
Here in New York City, we talk a lot about the New York City Ballet and the American Ballet Theater, but in many ways, the Joffrey (which also came from the city) is the most important American ballet company. It was the first time she performed at the White House and on television, it was the first time she was featured on the cover of TIME Magazine and in the great motion picture (Robert Altman Company) and the first to sing rock and roll. It was informal and inclusive, bicoastal and Midwestern. Joffrey’s story is part of the broader story of the rise and fall and rebirth of ballet in the US, and yet it is rarely told.
Murray was eager to demonstrate the depth of the newly discovered treasure and knew that Dr. Julia Foulkes, with whom she worked on the 2018 show “Voice of My City: Jerome Robbins and New York,” would be a good fit. the custodian. Foulkes spent a year and a half collecting and organizing materials with the help of Nicole Duffy, a former Joffrey company artist and current and returning director of The Gerald Arpino Foundation, and the result was a major exhibition called “The Joffrey + Ballet in the US. ,” on view at the New York Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center through March 1, 2025.
The show is framed around several questions that Joffrey and the dance world as a whole have long grappled with: Who makes ballet, and for whom? What should a ballet company do? How should a ballet company be financially supported? What will ballet look like in the future?
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Joffrey was always ready to think about these questions because his journey was not smooth and unusual. Although the world-renowned company (now led by artistic director Ashley Wheater MBE) known for its personality and large, financially secure collection is also 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 an Italian Catholic mother. She suffered from asthma as a child and bent her legs and began attending dance classes above her family’s restaurant to ease her illness. She quickly fell in love with dance and, by age 11, knew she wanted to lead her own dance company one day. Joffrey made his debut in 1949 with French choreographer Roland Petit and the Ballet de l’Opéra National de Paris, then opened his own ballet school in 1953 where he became a beloved teacher. In 1956, he founded the Robert Joffrey Theater Ballet with his partner Gerald Arpino (born Gennaro Peter Arpino in Stenen Island, New York in 1923) who came to dance later in life but was a great dancer. Joffrey remained in town to teach and run his school while the company’s original dancers (Arpino, Dianne Consoer, Brunilda Ruiz, Glen Tetley, Beatrice Tompkins and John Wilson) toured the country, performing in small theaters and in school halls and gymnasiums. “It was about bringing ballet to people who might not have seen it before,” Foulkes told the Observer. “That was the intention of Joffrey and the company at large.”
The exhibition takes visitors through a series of rooms from these rough early days on the road to the present day of the company with deep roots.
Another highlight is the room entitled “What Does a Ballet Company Do?” focusing on the work of several companies that have pushed the boundaries of what a ballet company—or any dance company—can do. Behind the beaded curtain is what Foulkes calls your “immersion experience.” Astarte (1967), one of Joffrey’s most daring works, is considered a multimedia production of its kind. The original psychedelic rock ballet was a duet featuring both a recorded and live film released on stage and a rock band (Crome Syrcus) in the pit. Astarte it was fun and made the cover of TIME, Life and the New York Times Magazine (and an unforgettable spread in Playboy)—all featured. Next to these images are Arpino’s sex video excerpts Little Rain (1981), defying the genre of Twyla Tharp Deuce Coupe (1973) and Anna Sokolow’s jazzy Opus ’65 (1965).
Another highlight—especially when it seems to fit in with the rest of the exhibit—is the room “Reconstructing the Past.” Joffrey wanted to present a new and innovative work, but he was also interested in reconstructing the art of the early 20th century. “Joffrey was committed to the idea that in order to think about a new and important future for ballet, you need to include these wonderful works of the past,” Foulkes explains. “Something that wasn’t respectful was a way of thinking about your company and dancing in a long history and how it can move forward again.” This room is dedicated to the company’s 1967 revival of Kurt Jooss’s anti-war piece. The Green Table (1932) and two works from Ballets Russes: a 1973 revival of Leonide Massine’s multimedia masterpiece. The Parade (1917) and Vaslav Nijinsky’s avant-garde reconstruction in 1987. Le Sacre du Printemps (1913). On display—among many other historical delights—is a mask from which he appears The Green Tablecubist costume designed by Picasso The Parade and video footage from company operations Le Sacre du Printemps.
Other things you shouldn’t miss are Arpino’s moving trunk, a color lithograph from 1845 by Marie Taglioni e. The Sylphide similar to the small black and white that Joffrey kept in his bag for the rest of his life, pointe shoes from The Parade again Billboards (1993), Joffrey NY/LA sports jacket from 1991, Arpino’s star-studded Rolodex and a short film of the company’s early works.
“Joffrey + Ballet in the US” is aptly named. It’s about both of those things, but it’s about so much more, too. It’s about New York and LA and Chicago, about culture and counterculture, about how art can preserve history and move forward into the future and a group of people who believed ballet could transcend it.
In the last room of the show, near the exit, is a digital list of everyone who has ever danced with Joffrey. “Approximately 400 people have danced with the company,” said Foulkes. Duffy took the time to collect all the names from Joffrey’s sixty-eight years of life. “It’s a commitment to the idea that the company is not just Robert Joffrey or Gerald Arpino or Ashley Wheater. These are 400 different people who created these jobs for us.”
