GERALD ARPINO, Choreographer and Joffrey Co-Founder, Dies at 85

Matthew Neff | Oct 30, 2008 | 1

Gerald Arpino

Gerald Arpino died on the Wednesday. He was 85 years old.

More info after the jump

NY TIMES
October 30, 2008

By ANNA KISSELGOFF
Gerald Arpino, a founder of the Joffrey Ballet and a distinctly American choreographer whose works popularized dance with their trendy finger on the nation’s pulse, died on Wednesday at his home in Chicago. He was 85. His death came after a long illness, said Christopher Clinton Conway, the Joffrey’s executive director, who did not specify a cause. Mr. Arpino, who was the Joffrey’s artistic director from 1988 to last year, founded the company in New York with Robert Joffrey in 1956 as a small touring troupe. Mr. Joffrey, who died in 1988, was its original artistic director; Mr. Arpino was considered its resident choreographer. He moved the company to Chicago in 1995. Mr. Arpino’s seemingly unstoppable creativity gave birth to a multitude of new ballets that encompassed counterculture rock hits like his 1970 “Trinity”; political protest pieces; several bold, erotically tinged works; and a cascade of sparkling plotless ballets, which attracted new audiences by capitalizing on the Joffrey dancers’ youth and energy. “The time we’re in now is a time of disease and terrors, corruption and indecision in politics,” Mr. Arpino told The New York Times in 1988, when he succeeded Mr. Joffrey as artistic director. “The artist in dance must return to social statements. The abstract form is necessary, but you can’t intellectualize life, you have to live it.” For many in the ballet world, especially purists who admired George Balanchine’s plotless ballets, these were fighting words. Critics of Mr. Arpino found his few erotic pieces, even if comic, sometimes tasteless. Yet for Mr. Arpino, there was no need to apologize for trying to reach a wider audience. Certainly, there was no doubt about his craft, fluency and imagination. “Bob and I came from the true grit of American background,” Mr. Arpino said in the 1988 interview, referring to Mr. Joffrey. “We know our own society. Ballet is still a foreign term to my brothers.” In Mr. Arpino’s view, he and Joffrey were typical Americans who came from traditional families. Mr. Arpino was proud of his Italian heritage and was known to express himself more colorfully than the more subdued Joffrey. A taste of his slang-oriented personality as a director was accurately depicted in “The Company,” Robert Altman’s 2003 movie about the Joffrey Ballet. Although most of the dancers played themselves, Mr. Arpino was portrayed by Malcolm McDowell, who had observed Mr. Arpino in rehearsals and captured his intonations and gestures. (In the movie, his character is named Alberto Antonelli.) Mr. Arpino was born on Staten Island and grew up there, but his relatives often visited the family-owned hotel near Sorrento, Italy. “I come from a John Travolta family,” he said. “My sisters and brothers were marvelous ballroom dancers.” He is survived by a cousin and a great grandnephew. Joffrey’s father was Afghan, his mother was Italian and he grew up in Seattle. The two met in Seattle through their mothers, who were friends, after World War II, and began to pursue what Mr. Arpino called an American vision for ballet. It was a personalized vision to which they held fast as directors. Both presented revivals from Europe, but the accent was on new American works. Both men also battled to retain artistic control of their company. In 1964 Rebekah Harkness, chief patron of the original Joffrey Ballet, sought to change the company’s name. Fearing that she would wrest artistic control from him, Joffrey broke with her and formed a new, reorganized Joffrey Ballet in 1965. When the company, often in a fragile financial state, encountered even more severe financial problems, a faction of the Joffrey board sought to remove Mr. Arpino as artistic director in 1990. Mr. Arpino withdrew his ballets, and public reaction and the support of the board reconfirmed his position as artistic director. He reorganized the company legally as Joffrey Ballet Chicago after supporters in Chicago provided financial aid. When he stepped down from his post last year, he was succeeded as artistic director by Ashley C. Wheater, once a dancer in the troupe. Mr. Arpino attended Wagner College on Staten Island for one year, and then enlisted in the United States Coast Guard Reserve in 1942. In Cold Bay, Alaska, Russian sailors came aboard his frigate and danced. It was his existential moment, setting him on a course toward dance. Soon after his ship docked in Seattle in 1945, he met Joffrey. Joffrey took him to his ballet teacher, Mary Ann Wells. Mr. Arpino studied with her and, later, in New York, studied at the School of American Ballet, Balanchine’s school, and with the modern dancer May O’Donnell. A severe injury in 1963 ended his dance career, but he had already started choreographing in 1961, and after the Joffrey toured internationally, including in Russia, he found his calling. “I turned a negative into a positive,” he said. “I’ve always done that.”

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Ballet, Performance, Gerald Arpino, Joffrey Ballet (all tags)