Gerald Arpino’s career with the Joffrey Ballet extends almost 50 years. He was one of the company’s first dancers in 1954, he choreographed his first work for it in 1961, and his dances have accounted for about one-third of its commissioned works.
Just how important he has been to the troupe is apparent in this final weekend of the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago’s fall season in the Auditorium Theatre. All four ballets on the program are by Arpino, stretching in time from 1968 with the pas de deux “Secret Places” to 1998 and “Footnotes for RJ,” created as a tribute by Arpino, now the troupe’s artistic director, to his friend and partner Robert Joffrey, who died in 1988.
“Footnotes,” set to a score by Teo Macero, was the usually prolific Arpino’s first ballet in 10 years when it premiered here, and for most of its 13 minutes, it looks and moves like a stark, abstract work in the mode of choreographer George Balanchine and composer Igor Stravinsky. The sharp, angular neoclassicism and the plain black and white rehearsal clothes, as well as Macero’s dissonant score, are reminiscent of the 1957 Balanchine-Stravinsky “Agon” collaboration.
Until the very end, the seven dancers move as if geared to the Balanchine technique; but the closing moments, with the dancers moving from a chain of silhouettes into a sudden, dramatic tableau sculpted by a burst of light, are sheer Arpino in its theatricality.
The performance of “Reflections,” set to Tchaikovsky’s “Rococo Variations,” is a homecoming for this work, which was first danced in the Auditorium in 1971.
From the moment its seven women, all pretty in pink and topped by glittering tiaras, come rushing out from the wings for a series of arabesques and jetes, their arms extended in supple grace, this is quintessential Arpino. In the seven variations that follow, he creates solos, duets and trios that flow effortlessly from one to the next; the women partnered by strong cavaliers in the trademark Arpino lifts.
“Secret Places,” to the “Elvira Madigan” theme of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, is the only dance with a trace of scenery (glinting metal poles, extending from floor to ceiling, by Ming Cho Lee). It represents Arpino at his most romantic, pairing a solitary young woman (Maia Wilkins) and man (Sam Franke) in an embrace of gentle passion.
Fittingly, the program ends with the 1978 “Suite Saint-Saen,” a company work for 20 dancers that never fails to bring cheers from its audience. A showcase for the virtuosity of the Joffrey’s dancers, it is a major Arpino work, playful and beautiful in the complex, changing patterns for its ensemble and spectacular in its solo opportunities.
For this current generation of Joffrey members, dancing in breathtaking precision, it is a grand finale.
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Joffrey Ballet of Chicago performs at 2 p.m. Sunday in the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Pkwy. Phone 312-902-1500.
