Dance on television: poster art.

The Joffrey Ballet's big, new, evening-length work, Billboards, is a ballet specifically created for people who have assiduously avoided spending money on dance in favor of shelling out millions on rock concerts. In a stunning flash of commercial insight, Gerald Arpino, Joffrey's artistic director, went straight for the MTV generation's jugular, persuading it to come over to his side and spend some heavy cash on classical dance transmuted into rock. His bait? None other than Prince, the rock star par excellence, whose music--wondrously original, utterly mesmerizing--has long been a brilliant mainstay of the pop-music world.

Called a modern Mozart by avant-garde director Peter Sellars, Prince--whose full name is Prince Rogers Nelson--produces music that any choreographer worth his or her mettle could easily tackle. It's a wonder no one has done it before. But then Prince himself might not have gone for the idea. However, as the Joffrey's press release puts it, "This landmark work [Billboards] was the result of Prince's first-ever visit to the ballet in 1991, where he saw the Joffrey. He was so inspired by what he saw that night he announced he was |going home to write ballet music.'"

The release went on to say that when Arpino asked Prince whether the Joffrey could use his music for four new ballets, the composer permitted the company to choose from the full range of his existing works, and the result is Billboards, choreographed by Laura Dean, Charles Moulton, Margo Sappington, and Peter Pucci. A New York Times article written last January by ballet critic Jennifer Dunning opens this way: "Just five months ago, it looked as if the financially hard-pressed Joffrey Ballet might not be able to perform in April at the New York State Theater as planned. But now the long-awaited engagement, the company's first appearance in Manhattan in more than two years, is a sure thing. The reason can be stated in one word, Billboards."

Indeed, this month the Joffrey performs at the State Theater, and Billboards--the moneymaker--will also be seen throughout the country when the ballet airs on April 20 in an abbreviated, hour-long version on "Great Performances/Dance in America" over the PBS network.

The four-part work, taped and recorded at the State University of New York Performing Arts Center at Purchase last August, for the most part offers mediocre choreography to exhilarating music. It's clearly the music that produces the whoops and hollers from the audience. Dean's opening section, "Sometimes It Snows in April," and Sappington's "Slide" are the most expert of the four ballets by virtue of their finely honed adherence to classical precepts understood and displayed via pop-oriented movements.

The contributions of Moulton and Pucci are of the typical "rock equals sex" syndrome, with endless hip gyrations and show-biz razzmatazz evocative of too many bad Chorus Line imitations. Still, that music and those songs--"Thunder," "Purple Rain," "4 You," "The Question of U," "It," "Willing and Able," and "Gett Off," among all the others ("Sometimes It Snows in April," "Trust," "Baby I'm a Star," "Computer Blue," "I Want to Melt With You," "Beautiful Ones," and "Release It")--make the watching positively compulsive. Billboards, produced, conceived, and directed by Arpino, is really just a great big rock album with steps.

The television "look" of Billboards is all that it should be: imaginative camera-work, terrific close-ups, and a sense of immediacy with shots of audience reactions. The television team of Derek Bailey (director), Richard Somerset-Ward (producer), and Robin Scott (executive producer) is to be commended.