Cowboys, lovers, and rockers in Chicago.

Joffrey Ballet of Chicago Auditorium Theatre Chicago, Illinois April 11-28, 2002

The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago's spring season in its home base was a triumph for classical ballet vocabulary. Not that classical ballet vocabulary needs a vindication, for it has been going its glorious way for decades, with frequent additions (invented when occasions demanded) by its trained practitioners.

The Joffrey boasts a repertoire of expertly presented treasures from the past (notably The Green Table and Les Presages) and new pieces that acknowledged the latest trend (such as Trinity). In spring 2002 the company resurrected Robert Joffrey's innovative multimedia ballet, Astarte (1967), a psychedelic work that had raised a storm at its premiere.

The ballet, carefully reconstructed by a huge staff, including filmmaker Gardner Compton, was not a rusty relic. Old-fashioned, yes, but still with the power to astound. The only characters are the ancient goddess Astarte, danced by the invaluable Maia Wilkins or Trinity Hamilton, and mesmerized Young Man, danced by Davis Robertson or Domingo Rubio. The ball opens with a rock-and-roll group, Arnold Roth and Platinum Lynx, sounding off in the pit and Astarte onstage in front of a filmed pas de deux danced by herself and the Young Man. The film was projected on a billowing screen that filled the tremendous proscenium.

In a trance, the Young Man leaves his seat in the audience and, guided by a spotlight, finds his way to the stage, onto which he climbs. His eyes are fixed on the live Astarte; he strips to his briefs, and approaching her, the two dance an erotic pas de deux. The wild music, the distorted film, the live dancing pair, plus distracting strobe lights all added up to an exciting theatrical experience. Phony, certainly, but exciting.

However, that unique revival was not the hit of the evening. The hit, and artistic favorite, was Gerald Arpino's classical piece Birthday Variations--five girls and a boy dancing to tuneful Verdi music. Early announcements of the "Multimedia Magic" program promised Arpino's intriguing multimedia ballet, The Clowns. However, for practical reasons, that ballet was not revived and, to the delight of press and public, Birthday Variations, commissioned in 1986 as a birthday gift for a board member, was presented.

Arpino is a genius at devising beautiful dance passages by manipulating classical ballet vocabulary in original ways. The well-trained Joffrey dancers flew through the devilishly difficult arrangements. The ballet was led by Wilkins and Willy Shires or Suzanne Lopez and Patrick Simonello.

As promised, the program included Caught, a clever number choreographed by David Parsons that depends on tricky timing and electrical gadgets to make a leaping dancer look like a bird in flight. Robertson, Calvin Kitten, and Taryn Kaschock were impressive in solo flights.

A new piece, Strange Prisoners, choreographed by Robertson to music by Bach, Mark O'Connor, and others, had little more than promise to recommend it. It must have been a nightmare for the stage crew, for there were scores of cues for changes of lights and settings as performers vanished in thin air while others appeared out of nowhere. These evanescent characters mixed with a multitude of real people who were part of the ballet. If you hadn't read the program note, none of what went on onstage was clear. The idea for Strange Prisoners was gleaned from the writings of the Greek philosopher Plato. That was an impressive bit of information, but it did not clarify matters.

The spring season also offered a program of masterworks. Antony Tudor's Lilac Garden, Agnes de Mille's Rodeo, and Arpino's Kettentanz made a most satisfying program, the most delightful one offered Chicagoans in many years.

Arpino made Kettentanz to music of Johann Strauss and Johann Mayer as a thank-you note to the Viennese community. The piece is all gaiety and human warmth to magically tuneful music. Arpino's great choreographic imagination was at work throughout the suite of dances--solos, pas de deux, pas de trois, etc. Kettentanz requires virtuosic dancers for its demanding classical vocabulary, which the dancers breezed through at breakneck speed. Among the crowd pleasers was the "Schnoffler Tanz," a solo in which Valerie Robin or Hamilton seemed blown by the wind as they skimmed across the stage in swift pas de bourree. There was the brilliant virtuosity of male classicism in the "Seufzer Galop," a duo danced by veteran purist Kitten and newcomer Masayoshi Onuki. Of course there was a lyric pas de deux, of course to a Viennese waltz. It was danced magically by Wilkins with Michael Levine, also Lopez with Shives.

Tudor's Lilac Garden (or as he insisted it be referred to, Jardin aux lilas) displays a masterly use of the classical vocabulary. The extensions, the jumps (which are often merely decorative or performed for virtuosic thrills) are used by the choreographer as means to express psychologically inspired feelings. In the thwarted meeting of Lilac Garden's lovers, an arabesque expresses yearning, a pirouette is a warning to turn away. The Tudor masterpiece can be merely pictorial, as it often has been in hurried productions. However, the Joffrey production was as clear as spoken words, every movement motivated and tellingly simple. A guest at the nuptial party, blundering into a meeting of the lovers, shows with a silencing finger-to-lips that she perceived all and will keep the secret. The male lover displays suppressed feelings when a tryst is interrupted.

Agnes de Mille's Rodeo, set to a fine Aaron Copland score, portrays how the West of "only yesterday" partied. Into this portrait is woven de Mille's personal heartache, the loneliness and hurt of the homely girl, neglected by the boys. I always felt the ache of the homely Cowgirl in de Mille's candid performances. However, the Joffrey's alternate Cowgirls, Kaschock or Deanne Brown, are hardly unattractive, and the heartbreak element was missing from what was a purely joyous ballet. The theme of Rodeo is celebration, and the Joffrey's boys caught the choreographer's intentions in the theatricalized movements of cowboys, on and off horses, and in the rhythm of the very social square dances.