Movie review: Joffrey: Mavericks of Dance

The Joffrey’s back in New York City for one week at Cinema Village.  Bob Hercules’ movie Joffrey: Mavericks of Dance premiered on April 27th. Back in 1956 the Robert Joffrey Theater Dancers numbered six: three girls and three boys. They set out to make modern and contemporary American ballets and Joffrey, with its archival footage, will be an eye-opener for anyone unfamiliar with them.

This encapsulating documentary tells the story through the eyes of former company members; some, like ABTs Kevin McKenzie, went on to lead elsewhere. In Joffrey we feel the passion for ballet. Luckily, as Chicago-based critic Hedy Weiss says on screen, the company is still in the making.

In 1995, the Joffrey (with forty dancers) found a new home in Chicago. Hard to believe it was so long ago that trios, quartets, and quintets of slim girls in pink tights, “bun-head” pupils from the Joffrey School, strolled New York’s Avenue of the Americas on their break.

In their decades here, the Joffrey recovered several times over. Survival ultimately meant leaving for more welcoming digs. They went through dire periods. Their major supporter decamped to build a company of her own, with most of the Joffrey dancers in tow. Joffrey, co-artistic director Gerald Arpino, and a few holdouts were back to square one. When they lost NEA funding, they lost dancers again. Luckily, the school could replenish with its best pre-professionals. The ADs made a point of diversity and focused on dance intelligence rather than how well the dancer fit the ballet body-type mold.

They created ballets infused with modern and contemporary themes. Joffrey’s Astarte (1967) is a psychedelic ballet that came out of his club experience. “It’s a light show, it’s sexy, it’s free, it’s outrageous” wrote Anna Kisselgoff in The New York Times. Trinity (1970) is Arpino’s tribute to our soldiers fighting in Vietnam. His choreographic style was looser and this work includes dancers’ improvised disco steps. A rebel, a spiritual, and a sexual character represent youth of the day, to music of the time.

Joffrey gave Twyla Tharp a first assignment and she created the classic Deuce Coupe. They commissioned works by other mavericks: Paul Taylor, Mark Morris, William Forsythe, and Léonide Massine. When the company hit financial bottom, the pop idol Prince gave them free rights to his music. With that, Arpino commissioned choreographers Laura Dean, Charles Moulton, Margo Sappington and Peter Pucci to collaborate on Billboards. Kisselgoff called it “a true rock ballet of the 1990s.” Many critics pooh-poohed these strange, exaggerated modern ballets but audiences kept coming.

Joffrey was also concerned with preserving important early modern classics like Massine’s “Parade.” They brought in the experts. Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer staged their reconstruction of Vaslav Nijinsky’s lost Le Sacre du Printemps, and Kurt Jooss worked with the company on The Green Table.

At 57 Joffrey died of AIDS (kept secret as per custom in 1988). His loss was a shocking blow.  Eventually, Arpino came into his own after the company left New York.  He worked until 2007 and one year later, he too passed away. They were like parents, said former Joffrey dancers on Joffrey. One, Ashley Wheater, carries on as Artistic Director.

Like the company itself, Hercules called on experts. Sasha Anawalt, who wrote the 1996 book on the Joffrey, also speaks in this delightfully life-like and conversational survival tale.