Joffrey Ballet Tickets

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The Joffrey Ballet is a dancing troupe hailing from Chicago. It was discovered in 1956 and has been in the limelight since 1995 when it was titled the “The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago”. It has to its credit, performances such as Romeo & Juliet and The Nutcracker, but the only thing different about these performances was the modern approach given to these classical tales. Many productive choreographers have operated with the Joffrey such as Twyla Tharp, George Balanchine, Paul Taylor, Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino. To date Joffrey Ballet tickets are sold like hot cakes.

Joffrey Ballet broke ballet boundaries with his rock ballet Astarte (1968), which made the cover of Time Magazine. In 1971, The Joffrey Ballet revived Léonide Massine's 1917 Cubist ballet, Parade. Here, Joffrey and Massine worked with the 1971 cast. Joffrey created 17 works for The Joffrey Ballet, including Remembrantes (1973). In 1979, Joffrey presented a program of works originally produced by Sergei Diaghilev. Nureyev danced the title role in Michel Fokine's Petrouchka (1911) in The Joffrey's 1979 Diaghilev program.

Arpino's Light Rain (1981) featured sensual and provocative movement. Here, Arpino rehearsed with the Joffrey Ballet company. In 1987 Joffrey revived another important work: Vaslav Nijinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps (1913) (The Rite of Spring). At the premiere Beatrix Rodriguez performed the role of the Chosen One, who dances herself to death. Joffrey premiered the full-length rock ballet ‘Billboards’, set to music by Prince in 1993. Here, Maia Wilkins and Pierre Lockett strike a pose in choreographer Peter Puccia's number, "Willing and Able".

The new concept of dance as total theater is an eclectic hybrid: it borrows what it needs from classical ballet, modern dance, jazz, rock 'n' roll and pop art and goes on from there. In recent years, it has found its expression in scores of versatile companies: not only the Joffrey Ballet dancers, but also the Harkness Ballet, the troupes founded by Alvin Ailey, Paul Taylor, Alwin Nikolais, Merce Cunningham and others. Uncommitted to principle or precedent, these organizations and the dancer-choreographers behind them have begun to have an impact on their masters.

Joffrey huddled with two friends who had helped him build the original troupe: choreographer Gerald Arpino, 37, and business manager Alex Ewing, 37. Over the next year, in a kind of freewheeling fiscal pas de trois, they raised $165,000 and landed two Ford grants totaling $165,000. Ewing, a Yale graduate, arranged for a one-week tryout season at the City Center. Arpino created two new ballets. Joffrey Ballet, meanwhile, hand-picked the best 20 dancers in his school, and rehearsed them until 10 every night for nearly seven months. When the revitalized Joffrey Ballet finally made its City Center debut in March 1966; it scored such a resounding critical success that it was quickly installed as the theater's resident company. The thrust of Joffrey's teaching is to tune the body so that any choreographer, modern or classical, can do what he wants with it. The method, in short, is to learn classical technique then forget it. The best way to do that is to get down on the floor in the modern way and dig in and search. For reasons of mental independence, Joffrey Ballet separates the boys into classes that stress the he-man aspects of stamina, big jumps and multiple turns. So effective is his teaching that Rudolf Nureyev, when he is in town, as well as principal dancers of the New York City
Ballet, stop by at the chocolate factory for extra lessons.

In its determination to charm younger audiences, Joffrey Ballet is bracing old collection that interested to a younger generation in its prime era. It's no accident that the dancers depict high school students both in performances by the Twyla Tharp's Deuce Coupe staged in1973 or the era of Beach Boys, choreographed in 1973 to music by The Beach Boys. Their dances are divine and one short of breath when they are at their peak. The climax of their performances is mind blowing and aesthetic.

Joffrey Ballet tickets are available now for all those ballet lovers out there. Come and enjoy this eclectic and charming dancing troupe move on their toes like a ballerina.