DANCE MAGAZINE – September 1996
JOFFREY’S NEXT WAVE
by Caitlin Sims
“WE ARE THE NEXT WAVE; we are the next group of people who are being taught the way that Mr. Joffrey and Mr. Arpino taught their company,” says Brian McSween, relaxing between rehearsals at the Joffrey Ballet School in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. McSween and nine other young dancers make up the recently formed Joffrey Ballet Center Concert Dancers, the second company to Joffrey Ballet of Chicago.
Joffrey Concert Dancers is based entirely in the Joffrey school, which remains in New York though the main company has relocated to Chicago. “It is actually the advanced students from the school who come straight into this company,” explains Edward Morgan, the artistic director.
The new second company has a different focus than Joffrey II, a previous second company disbanded in 1995. “Joffrey II was essentially an apprentice company to the main company,” explains Edith D’Addario, director of the Joffrey school. While Joffrey Concert Dancers retains the spirit and style of the main company and is a source of dancers for the main company, it maintains its own repertoire and touring schedule.
The goal remains the same, however-to transform advanced students into professional dancers. “These dancers will be funneled into the main company, or other major companies,” explains Morgan. “Some of them may even end up on Broadway.”
To prepare the young dancers for life in a dance company, the rehearsal schedule is rigorous. After at two-hour cross in the morning, dancers rehearse all afternoon and sometimes into the evening. “What we do is not easy at all,” soys McSween. “We are basically doing what a company does.” Morgan is this generation’s link to the post, training the company in the style he acquired firsthand from Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino as a Joffrey dancer in the eighties and early nineties. In a lateafternoon rehearsal, Morgan stops the dancers as they glide through his slinky Caught by the Sun. “Mr. Joffrey used to say, ‘Simplicity is beauty,’ ” Morgan explains, showing the dancers how, by refining their focus instead of adding superfluous movement, they can better convey the style of the piece.
Ebullient and outgoing, Morgan responds differently to each dancer, gently drawing out the more reticent dancers and leading the stronger personalities to meld with the ensemble while retaining their individuality. His ability to create a unified company despite diverse personalities and body types is another vestige of the Joffrey legacy.
“If you put the Joffrey dancers in a room, they are all so different,” says dancer Sara Lepere, age eighteen. “Then you put them onstage and they all come together and it’s just amazing to see. I think shot’s what Mr. Morgan has brought to the second company. We are all individuals. And yet we con all come together and look the same.”
Morgan currently creates all of the choreography for the group, incorporating ballet, jazz, and modern dance. He expects eventually to bring in other choreographers, including dancers from the main company.
The young dancers embrace Morgan as a mentor and as a friend. “I tell them they can talk to me about anything from chewing bubble gum to pique arabesque,” soys Morgan, who also encourages and cultivates the dancers non performing potential Morgan noticed McSween’s leadership abilities and has given him opportunities to act as ballet master in rehearsals.
Joffrey Concert Dancers performs year-around-round at universities, summer festivals, and public schools in the New York area maintaining on important Jeffrey presence in New York. Some of the dancers have traveled to Chicago to dance with the main company, about which they gush. “When I was with the company, it was such a wonderful experience,” says Jennifer Block, age twenty, “because the dancers are all so caring, and they all want to help and work with you.”
Before they are ready to join a company of Joffrey’s stature the dancers, who range in age from seventeen to twenty-two, will remain in the second company for a year to eighteen months.
The dancers are convinced that all of the personal attention they receive is paying off. “I hove not only grown as a dancer, but also as a person, a great deal,” says McSween. “At first it was really hard for a lot of people, but everyone helps each other. [The teachers and staff are really supportive, but they also say, ‘I know it’s hard, but get used to it. And we all have.”
