조프리 발레단(The Joffrey Ballet)의 역사를 조명하는 특별전 'The Joffrey + Ballet in the U.S.'이 9월 19일부터 내년 3월 1일까지 링컨센터 내 공립도서관(The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts)에서 열린다.

 

조프리 발레단은 1956년 로버트 조프리(Robert Joffrey, 1930-1988)와 그의 파트너 제랄드 아르피노(Gerald Arpino, 1923-2008)가 시카고에서 창단했다. 로버트 조프리는 아프가니스탄 출신 아버지와 이탈리아 출신 어머니 사이에서 태어났으며 본명은 압둘라 자파 베이 칸(Abdullah Jaffa Bey Khan)이었지만 고등학교 때 개명했다.

 

조프리 발레단은 6명의 무용수로 시작해 스테이션 왜건을 타고 작은 마을에서 공연을 시작, 1987년 바슬라프 니진스키(Vaslav Nijinsky)의 '봄의 제전(The Rite of Spring)' 등 경계를 뛰어넘는 무대로 찬사를 받아왔다.  

 

 

The Joffrey Ballet Company, 1996

 

The Joffrey + Ballet in the U.S.

 

September 19, 2024–March 1, 2025

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 

 

Abdullah Jaffa Bey Khan had little reason to believe that ballet was for people like him. Ballet came from a distinctly elite tradition, formed in European courts and solidified in the 19th century as an art form for the pleasure and consumption of the upper classes. Khan–who took the name Robert Joffrey by high school in Seattle–knew he wanted to be a dancer. It was from this vantage point that Joffrey and his co-founder Gerald Arpino started a ballet company with a primary doctrine: that ballet was for everyone.

 

Despite The Joffrey Ballet’s significant cultural impact, its story has received scant attention until now. In 2017, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division acquired the entire Joffrey archive—the largest acquisition for the Library in a decade. The Joffrey + Ballet in the U.S., the first large-scale retrospective of the company, offers an unparalleled opportunity to delve into the history and legacy of The Joffrey Ballet through its archival materials.

 

 

The Joffrey Ballet at Wolftrap, Virginia, c.1970s

 

In 1956, the company of six dancers traveled in a station wagon to perform in small towns across the country. Joffrey and Arpino celebrated dancers’ individuality and broadened representation on stage by cultivating dancers through attentive teaching and diverse choreography. They imagined a future for ballet that included the reconstruction of key works of dance history and new work by young choreographers that pulled from ballet, modern dance, and social dance. And they spread their view of ballet with appearances on television, allying with corporations, and courting celebrities. Over 70 years, the company has grown from six dancers to 40 to become a globally renowned force in the ballet world, from peripatetic motion and financial precarity to a secure, rooted home in Chicago.

 

This exhibition reveals the challenges, ingenuity, and dedication that it took to build a ballet company in the U.S. Ballet has spread across the country in the last hundred years; dance companies have sprouted from Alaska to Wyoming. The Joffrey seeded this growth by bringing ballet to more people–redefining what ballet is in the process and constructing the future of ballet in the U.S.

 

This exhibition is organized by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and curated by Dr. Julia Foulkes with assistance from Nicole Duffy.

https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions