Billboards.

By now nearly everyone must know the story of how Prince Rogers Nelson (just "Prince" to rock fans) offered his music for a Joffrey production and Billboards was the result. But what you can't know before seeing it is that the piece, being performed around the country on a single bill, has lined the Joffrey's coffers while sacrificing the company's aesthetic mission.

Artistic director Gerald Arpino's initial idea was a good one: Using the concept of billboards as America's most ubiquitous manifestation of pop art, and the work of four very hip choreographers, the Joffrey would introduce ballet to an extensive new audience more accustomed to rock concerts than to opera house visits. Things appear to have gone off the rails when three of the four dance-makers bothered less with the music than with fourth-rate MTV routines and dancing that has more to do with pelvic bumps than with bourrees.

The exception was Laura Dean, whose "Sometimes It Snows in April" offered a glimpse of what this whole production could have been. Dressed in Rosemarie Worton's floating white costumes with subtly twinkling brilliants, the dancers enter in single files from the first wing stage left and then from wings consecutively further upstage. Working horizontally and diagonally, Dean establishes a kind of formality appropriate to the lyrics' references to death and loss.

As the music builds to tonal competitions, we see the dancers one-upping each other in miniature duets of pyrotechnical classical feats, spiked with some street dancing. For a few blissful minutes, the Joffrey generates the same sort of delicious high that spectators felt with the ensemble's previous experiments with rock music, such as Twyla Tharp's Deuce Coupe and Arpino's own Trinity. Dean demonstrates yet another expansion of ballet's limitless possibilities. When the dancers received an ovation for her thoughtful and witty frolic, the tone was set for a glorious evening, but everything went downhill from that point.

Charles Moulton's "Thunder," a setting of "Thunder" and "Purple Rain," focuses mostly on humping. With featured roles for Valerie Madonia and Elizabeth Parkinson, as well as lurid costumes by Charles Atlas, these sequences bring disco imitation to a crashing new low. Margo Sappington fares somewhat better with "Slide," the third section, yet she also succumbs to a yen to put lots of sexy steps to rhythmic pulses. Her clever costumes were designed by George Ramos and a set was provided for this dance by Campbell Baird.

For the final "Willing and Able," Peter Pucci strings together the title song with "For You," "The Question of U," "It," and an excerpt from "Gett Off," which could have been interpreted as an aptly chosen stage direction. Christine Joly, assisted by David Brooks, did the costumes.

Except for the gigantic images created by Herbert Migdoll to open each section, there was not a single allusion to billboards. And as for winning new audiences to ballet, crowds can see much better shows than this in every major rock arena, with just as little reference to classicism.

By the time the final curtain rang down, I was concerned for the glorious Joffrey dancers. How grueling it must be to perform nothing but Billboards for several months, then go directly into the seasonal Nutcracker stint. No one can minimize the financial hardships dictated by the recent economic recession or quarrel with the need for all dance companies to employ smart box-office programming. Nobody, however, enjoys seeing fine artists in pure claptrap, balletic or otherwise.

Is it better to have the Joffrey in Billboards than to have no Joffrey at all? Yes, but only if the troupe's essential dedication to classical quality--old and new--is not destroyed in the process.