INTERVIEW MAGAZINE
Home of the Joffrey Ballet’s most familiar faces will be missing when the company opens its six-week City Center season on October 26. Philip Jerry, Mark Goldweber, Charlene Gehm, and Dawn Caccamo all gave their final performances with the Joffrey during its summer tour. Goldweber, departing after 11 years, has joined Pacific Ballet Theatre, which is based in Portland, Ore., and directed by former Joffrey member James Canfield. Caccamo, who joined the Joffrey in 1983 and became the company’s most prominent leading lady of recent years, is now with the Houston Ballet. Gehm, a 12-year Joffrey veteran, just joined the ballet chorus of Phantom of the Opera (where an- other Joffrey alum, Luis Perez, is a featured dancer in the show). Philip Jerry, who joined the Joffrey in 1975, has left to pursue his choreographic interests, he says. Those dance watchers who didn’t blink in 1985 saw his promising first work for the company, Hexameron, which quickly dis- appeared from the repertory. Jerry reports the company’s busy touring and rehearsal schedule didn’t allow him to take on additional choreography projects and that in recent years he had to turn down several opportunities. “It reached a point where I wanted to be able to say yes,” he says. In every ballet compa- ny, dancers come and go all the time. The exodus of so many leading dancers from the Joffrey is more a matter of their all having reached critical points in their careers, Jerry notes, rather than a direct response to compa- ny director Robert Jof- frey’s untimely death in March. New additions to the 38-member company’s roster include Edward Morgan, a former Joffrey member who is returning after a three- year hiatus; New Zealander Glenn Harris, who has danced with the Australian and Zurich ballets; and two recruits from the company’s affiliated junior troupe, the Joffrey II: Lissette Salgado and Adam Sklute….