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New Prince at the Joffrey
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21930 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1993 |
1,783 Words |
| Author
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Camille Hardy
Camille Hardy is a New York-based critic who publishes and
broadcasts on the arts internationally. |
The Joffrey Ballet was born on a wing and a prayer in 1956, when the late Robert Joffrey, together with six dancers in a station wagon, embarked on a tour of twenty-three one-night stands. A distinctive combination of derring-do and vision has always characterized this troupe, recently snatched out of the jaws of insolvency by the tenaciousness of present artistic director General Arpino and his production of Billboards, the hottest ballet to hit opera houses in more than a decade.
What's so special about Billboards? For starters, its score is made up of thirteen songs by Prince Rogers Nelson, or "Prince,, as adoring fans know him. The rock star also wrote an extended version of his "Thunder" expressly for this evening-length Joffrey production. Add to this Arpino's facility as a producer, the experimental verve of choreographers Laura Dean, Charles Moulton, Margo Sappington, and Peter Pucci (each of whom created a section), and the company's gifted ensemble of forty dancers, and the result is a blockbuster.
The saga of Billboard is as short as it is sweet. Funds raised by Iowa Friends of the Joffrey. Centered in Iowa City, where Hancher Auditorium and its executive director, Wallace Chappell, have a track record of supporting world premieres by this troupe, were originally earmarked for a classical production--a story ballet, in other words. Various difficulties prevented this plan, and Arpino was down to a three-day period in which to come up with an alternative or lose the $300,000 in funds.
So he revved up his creative thinking. He remembered that during 1991, Joffrey board member Patricia Kennedy had brought Prince to the opening of the company's Los Angeles season. Prince had never attended a ballet before, and he fell in love at first sight with the Joffrey. Arpino describes him as "a very private person, sweet and quite shy." When presenting the 1990 Award of Achievement to Prince at the American Music Awards, opera and stage director Peter Sellers called the composer "a modern Mozart." But Prince is better known than Mozart among youthful audiences: Twelve of the thirteen songs in Billboards come from albums that achieved platinum status, or sales in excess of a million copies each.
When casting about to come up with a revised proposal for Hancher, Arpino recalled Prince had said, "I want to write music for the Joffrey Ballet." The choreographer also has a long association of combining classical movement with pop culture. His own production of Trinity was a paean of peace and love that mixed ballet with lighted
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