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Bicoastal Ballet
| Article
# : |
20450 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1992 |
1,964 Words |
| Author
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Julia Braun Kessler
Julia Braun Kessler is arts editor for LA West magazine in Los
Angeles. Her articles appear in Travel & Leisure and other
national publications. |
It was a miraculous partnership. The pairing of dancers Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino lasted well over thirty years and was responsible for the development of what could be considered a wholly new American concept of dance: the Joffrey Ballet.
Now successor as artistic director of the renowned American ballet company they founded together in 1956, Arpino enjoys characterizing that three-decades-long collaboration. "I would play Dionysus to his Apollo," he says affectionately.
For it was Bob Joffrey (1931-1988), ever the balanced character, the harmonious and ordered man, who had been the "architect and contractor" of their acclaimed enterprise. And Gerry Arpino, while building alongside him over the years, was kept at liberty to create, enabled to give his imagination its full scope. Joffrey freed Arpino to be the fantasist of their common dream.
What a different picture presents itself for the ballet's surviving founder these days! He must act, he explains, "as one for two, to make the experimental process we built flourish."
Arpino's tanned, dark-eyed handsomeness, slim dancer's figure, and lithe, graceful gestures make a debonair impression. He still speaks in a subdued tone of his colleague's untimely death at the early age of fifty-seven. The loss remains devastating, felt not only by himself and other Joffrey intimates, but throughout the dance world.
Arpino believes that Joffrey was unique. "He was one of the great directors of the art we have experienced, and the concept 'American classic,' so often used to characterize the Joffrey Ballet's presence, truly captures the whole meaning of our venture. It was Bob's vision to encompass a broader scope. He took in tradition, hundreds of years of a scientifically grounded, highly disciplined art, and then began to interpret and invest it with an American sensibility. Our ballet became something of a hybrid: It is cross-blooded. And then, all of a sudden, it happened: Ballet was no longer a foreign term; it became American dance as well."
'Out of America'
From the first, in fact, the partners strove to cultivate American sensibilities for their art. As Joffrey said, "I wanted a company that happened out of here, out of America!" Arpino clarifies that statement, saying, "America is a
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