THE JOFFREY BALLET Critical acclaim

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THE JOFFREY BALLET
Critical acclaim

“The Joffrey’s great leap forward: It has been three years since Ashley Wheater became artistic director of the Joffrey
Ballet and grand designs for the company are now visible at every turn, with the dancers looking technically superb
but also regaining that unique Joffrey trait of connecting with the audience while dancing both acknowledged
classics and new work.

And the fireworks currently on display at the Auditorium Theatre — along with those so visible during the company’s
bravura fall program of ballets by Balanchine, Robbins and Christopher Wheeldon — reinforces the sense that the
Joffrey ensemble is in exceptional form these days.

One final note: This is a city where even the most superb performers often seem embarrassed about taking bows. But
this time around the Joffrey fully relished its many fully deserved curtain calls.

The verdict is unequivocal: In "All Stars," its magnificent fall program at the Auditorium Theatre, the Joffrey Ballet
(expertly accompanied by the Chicago Sinfonietta) is dancing as it has never danced before.

it was a grand reminder of the Joffrey's unmatched flair for character work, with a mischievous Paul Lewis James
at the piano.”
Chicago Sun-Times, Hedy Weiss

“But balletgoing rarely gets more rewarding, and the dancers reach for — and often grasp — new levels of
achievement.”
Chicago Tribune, Sid Smith

“There’s no question that the Joffrey dancers do a magnificent job with the acting and choreography.”
See Chicago Dance, Laura Molzahn

“To move from such poignant physicality in Act II to such hilarious physicality in the third act is a staggering display
of the Joffrey’s world-class talent and incomparable versatility.”
Chicago Stage Review, Venus Zarris

“An American icon, the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago is the Windy City’s own increasingly respected jewel in the world of
contemporary dance since the company relocated from New York and L.A. to Chicago in 1995.”
The Beverly Review, Kathleen Tobin

“Artistic director Ashley Wheater, who took over the company in 2007, has made a point of giving younger dancers a
chance at bigger roles, so Detroiters should notice an invigorated spirit in the performances.”
Detroit News, Barbara Hoover
THE JOFFREY BALLET
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"The Joffrey Ballet's revolutionary style combined with unique and varied choreography -- and exquisite execution --
brought them to the forefront of the classical dance world,"…"These highly trained dancers move with unparalleled
elegance, in a performance that will mesmerize our audience with its flawless beauty."
Doug Booher, director of IU Auditorium in IU News

“ It’s safe to say this fascinating, invigorating piece is evidence of a bold, refreshing talent. “
Review of “Age of Innocence” Sid Smith, Chicago Tribune

“danced with heart-stopping brilliance”
Chicago Sun-Times, Hedy Weiss

“Wheater and crew deserve applause for superb performances and for a musical, visually gorgeous production.”
Review of “The Nutcracker,” Sid Smith, Chicago Tribune

“Calmels’ technical abilities increasingly match his god-given looks as one of the most princely male dancers in
America today.”
Review of “The Nutcracker,” Sid Smith, Chicago Tribune

“…An ingenious spin on the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic.”
Review of “Carousel,” Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times
JOFFREY BALLET
Sarasota Herald-Tribune • March 11, 2016

Ballet's bright future on display

BY CARRIE SEIDMAN

In the fall of 2010, Jennifer Homans raised hackles in the dance world when she proclaimed in “Apollo’s Angels,” her
definitive history of ballet, that the art form was dying.

“Contemporary choreography veers aimlessly from unimaginative imitation to strident innovation,” she wrote, while
“today’s artists . . . have been curiously unable to rise to the challenge of their legacy.”

I took issue with Homans’ fatalistic conclusion then and, after watching the Joffrey Ballet perform the work of four
living choreographers at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall Thursday night, I feel even more confident she was
mistaken. In fact, the pieces by the youngest of those dance makers – Justin Peck, New York City Ballet’s resident
choreographer is 28 and Myles Thatcher, corps de ballet with the San Francisco Ballet just 25 – represented some of
the strongest contemporary choreography I have seen in a decade.

Let’s start with Peck, a phenom who remains a soloist with NYCB, though goodness knows how he makes time for it
given the increasing demand for his services as a choreographer. He caused a stir with his first piece just four years ago
and within two years was named the second ever resident choreographer at the illustrious company, which rests on the
choreographic legacy of its founder, George Balanchine.

The program opened with “In Creases,” Peck’s first work for NYCB, and seeing it, you could understand that rapid
rise. It may be going out on a limb to say so, but not since Balanchine himself have I seen choreography that was such a
personification of its music, bringing to mind the off-quoted “See the music, hear the dance” of the master himself.

An abstract “black and white ballet” in the Balanchine tradition – the “costumes,” also designed by Peck, had the four
men and four women in light gray/white leotards and tights, with the men (rather oddly) in black socks and slippers – it
was danced to live music provided by two pianists at facing grand pianos, thundering out the multi-layered score of
Phil Glass’s “Four Movements for Two Pianos.” There are echoes of Balanchine too in the dancers’ linked arms, the
inventive and ever-changing ensemble patterns and the stream of clever but never cute innovations, yet nothing is
derivative or imitative. “In Creases” is structurally, musically and kinetically original, fresh and utterly engaging, a
constant unfolding of delightful surprises.

There were so many memorable moments that the person seated next to me commented on my prodigious, in-the-dark
note-taking. But I didn’t want to forget the stream of images: The dancers in a vertical line performing a rapid-fire and
staccato sequence of angular arm movements, sequentially, but not in unison. A male soloist barely missing the bodies
of a line of horizontally prone women as he hopscotches forward, like an infantryman weaving through an obstacle
course. A partnered female, her leg extended straight forward and clasped at the ankle like a weapon, “mowing down”
the circle of dancers surrounding her as her partner moves her in a slow rotation.
Joffrey Ballet
Sarasota Herald-Tribune • March 11, 2016
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To see such confident creativity and surety of construction in a choreographer so young was, I thought, highly unusual.
At least I did until the program moved on to Myles’ Thatcher’s “Passengers,” which the San Francisco Ballet corps
member created expressly for the Joffrey last summer. The piece, to Steve Reich’s “The Four Sections and Triple
Quartet,” is said to have been inspired by Thatcher’s year of peregrinations with the Rolex Mentor and Protégés Arts
Initiative and his intrigue with his fellow, anonymous, travelers.

Provocatively set and lit (by Alexander V. Nichols, recreated by Jack Mehler) as if in a train station, with individual
overhead lights and a line of suspended windows as a backdrop, it has no narrative through-line, but brings to life a
series of enigmatic human dramas. Here is the angry and abusive man, whose female partner alternates between
clinging and retreating. There is the husband who violently rejects, then ultimately succumbs to the come-ons of a
persistent young man, as his young wife looks on in shock from behind one of the hanging windows. A lost girl,
pursued by an attendant, drops the purse she has tightly clutched to her chest in alarm as she tries to flee.

Throughout, the vintage bags of the travelers are cleverly used as stepping stones, seats or protective barriers as these
lonely vignettes emerge. As with Peck, though in a completely different style, Thatcher evidences a surety of
expression and an organic talent for patterns and logic that is all the more impressive given his tender years.

Nicolas Blanc, a former dancer with the San Francisco Ballet and the Joffrey’s current ballet master, created the pas de
deux, “Rendez-vous,” for a couple competing in an international ballet competition in 2014, but the duet had its Joffrey
premiere less than a week ago during the company’s tour stop in Naples. Danced here by Nicole Ciapponi and Derrick
Agnoletti in purple leotards, it had an urgency and insistence that matched the fast-paced electronic score of Rene
Aubry’s “Apres La Pluie,” full of slides, leaps and split jumps. The speed and sharpness of the dancers was impressive,
but the excessive volume of the music, amplified by the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall’s acoustics, was a bit much
for my ears.

The program concluded with Christopher Wheeldon’s “Fool’s Paradise,” a feast for the eyes which the British
choreographer – who won a Tony last year for “An American in Paris” on Broadway -- created for his former
company, Morphoses, in 2007. To a romantic score that his frequent collaborator, Joby Talbot, originally wrote to
accompany the 1916 silent film, “The Dying Swan,” it is a series of solos, duets and trios evidencing Wheeldon’s
facility with creating gorgeous lines, sculptural tableaux and fluidly elegant partnering. Its evocative overhead lighting
(Penny Jacobus, recreated by Jack Mehler) gave both the dancers, in simple satin trimmed gold leotards, and the
sporadic shower of falling “petals” a magical, fantastical aura.

While I’ve raved about the choreography – and rightly so – I should be remiss not to mention the dancing, which was
polished, moving and nuanced throughout. The Joffrey, celebrating its 60th year, has never looked better. Between the
dancers’ artistry and the choreographers’ ingenuity, I left the theater feeling the future of ballet as an art form was,
contrary to Homans’ dire prediction, quite assured.
JOFFREY BALLET
USA Today • February 19, 2016

Beneath the beautiful ballet, a brutal toll on the body

BY MAGGIE HENDRICKS

Nicole Ciapponi pops off her boot and rolls down her sock, revealing a large mass on the inside of her right foot. A
four-inch scar runs across the bump. The wad of scar tissue protrudes at a right angle; it doesn’t make sense that she
walks so easily in those high heeled boots. She sits on a well-worn couch in the physical therapy room at the 126-year-
old Auditorium Theater between two performances of the Joffrey Ballet’s Nutcracker. Earlier that day, the company
performed for a large group of Chicago Public Schools students. Later that night, they would perform the well-known
ballet for a packed house.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky debuted the Nutcracker in 1892 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Even if you don’t know Tchaikovsky
from Gronkowski, your head has been filled with music from the Russian dance or the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
in commercials or in department stores during the holidays.

On opening night of the Joffrey Ballet’s Nutcracker, Ciapponi danced the solo Spanish divertissement, acting as one of
the many gifts given to Clara on her magical trip through the Land of Sweets. Wearing a costume of layers and layers
of black and gold lace and carrying a black lace fan, she transformed from a 22-year-old in jeans to a dancer worthy of
young Clara’s dreams. She did this even though her foot was held together by a screw earlier in the year. Over the
Joffrey’s 33 Nutcracker performances, she will play the Spanish dancer, a snowflake in the Land of Snow, a dahlia in
the Waltz of the Flowers, and a Mechanical Doll in the party scene before Clara gets her Nutcracker doll.

As families crowd into the theater and 7-year-old children gaze up to the stage, they want to see the magic of the
Nutcracker. They know nothing of the pain dancers may be feeling.

The screw that kept her foot together caused Ciapponi to limp, so she had it removed. The pain and uncertainty that
came with that surgery made Ciapponi wonder if she had to start rethinking her career. She had no idea if her body
could recover and become strong enough to do what she had spent 16 years training to do. Since she is Canadian, even
her ability to stay and dance in the United States was in question.

“Over a period of two years, I had been dancing with about seven fractures in my foot, and I thought it was tendinitis,”
Ciapponi says. “I was oblivious. It was in my Lisfranc joint. I had seven fractures, six bone chips and a tendon that was
just not there.”

Lisfranc injuries frequently knock NFL players off the field, sometimes for as long as an entire year and have in rare
cases ended careers.

Yet throughout December, Ciapponi — pronounced chee-A-pony — flew across the stage as the Spanish dancer in the
Joffrey Ballet’s staging of “The Nutcracker.” The role requires her to dance en pointe, rolled up on to the very tips of
her toes. She also has to do several leaps and spins, asking her feet to support her lithe frame as it whipped around. The
mass on her foot was hidden by ballet shoes, obscured to the many fans who yelled bravo when she finished her solo.
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USA Today • February 19, 2016
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Ciapponi, like the other members of the Joffrey and top companies across the country, is not just an elegant and
beautiful dancer. She is an elite athlete. Watch her practice and perform and you will not doubt that.

After a heated game with the New York Giants, Carolina Panther Cortland Finnegan ripped the Giants’ star receiver,
Odell Beckham, Jr. He said Beckham, who was whistled for three personal fouls in the Panthers’ win, started troubles
between the two teams by walking through the Panthers’ warm-up like a “ballerina.” Finnegan, who is known for his
trash talking, meant the term pejoratively.

He must not know how much he shares in common with the world’s elite ballet dancers.

The backstage of the massive Auditorium Theater doesn’t much resemble an NFL sideline. Painted sets and props are
everywhere, including the rafters, where a giant marionette used in “The Nutcracker” resides. A papier-mache
nutcracker head is perched on a shelf, next to an oversized mouse head. Glitter is everywhere.

Yet Ashley Wheater, the artistic director of the Joffrey Ballet, is very much the coach of this company of 41 dancers.
The words that come out of his mouth could easily be from Pete Carroll or Gregg Popovich. He sets the tone for the
company, evaluates his dancers’ performances, and decides casting. As a former dancer himself, Wheater understands
the pressures and joys of performing. Like Ciapponi, he still bears the scars of his dancing days.

In 1996, he was trying a new lift during rehearsal with the San Francisco Ballet. Lifts are common in ballet, but often
rely on the male dancer’s leg and arm strength to gracefully achieve the hoisting of a female partner. A German
choreographer wanted Wheater to try something different, and it resulted in the end of his career.

“I was asked to pick someone up on my head from the floor, without using my arms. So, their entire body weight was
on my head, and it was just too much. My disks couldn’t cope,” Wheater says. “It was really painful.”

Doctors told him they needed to operate, and the surgery would end his career. After dancing under Rudolf Nureryev
— a pioneer in ballet who changed it as much as Steph Curry has changed the NBA — and starring in San Francisco,
Australia and the Joffrey, his career was suddenly over.

He began teaching nearly immediately. He taught his first classes with the San Francisco Ballet while still wearing a
halo neck brace. Ten years later, the Joffrey hired him.

An artistic director focuses the direction of the ballet company, hiring teachers and casting dancers, choosing ballets to
perform, and oftentimes, serving as the choreographer. Those many roles mean some directors are not as present with
their dancers.

Wheater is a hands-on leader. He works with choreographers to stage his ballets and refines their work with his
company.

“I want to be in the studio with the company every day, so I am. I teach them. We have technique class every day,” he
says. “I coach them, I give them all the tools to support them, and the tools to demand more from them.”

In the fall, that challenge led the Joffrey to stage “Millennials,” a new program that pushed its dancers to difficult limits
as they had to learn a totally new ballet with new music and new choreography. The result was a program the Chicago
Tribune called “ambitious” and “impressive.”
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USA Today • February 19, 2016
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The Joffrey is considered an all-star ballet, so there is not a strict ranking of dancers, like in the New York’s American
Ballet Theater, where Misty Copeland made headlines earlier this year when she was the first African-American dancer
promoted to principal dancer. There is a hierarchy for more experienced dancers, but Wheater says the set-up at the
Joffrey allows for teamwork.

“I’m a big believer in giving people opportunities to try different things,” he says. “I think that knowing that, within the
team, people are there to support each other, because they knew that they had the opportunity, so they want to support
the other person.”

In his 13th season with the Joffrey, Derrick Agnoletti is one of Wheater’s more experienced dancers. With a short
frame, powerful legs and a muscular chest, he could easily be mistaken for a wrestler. Instead, Agnoletti uses those legs
to propel himself across the Auditorium’s stage in his role as one of the Russian dancers, requiring quick movements
with leaps high enough to make you wonder what he could do with a basketball in his hand.

Agnoletti started his athletic life in the pool. As a Californian from a family of swimmers, he was in the pool before he
could walk. He swam competitively and played water polo through college. But he knew he was always destined to
dance.

His swim coach told him to take a dance class when he was eight years old to improve coordination.

“I remember walking in the room, and this sounds so cliche, but I remember walking in the room, seeing the class
before me finishing, hearing the piano, and how everything was almost mathematical and geometrical and everybody
was so expressive, and I thought, This is what I’m going to do,” he says.

Sports are still part of Agnoletti’s life. Wheater is a proponent of cross-training for his dancers, and Agnoletti embraces
this. He swims three times a week, and says ESPN is always on in his home. He sees athletes who could have easily
followed his path and excelled as a dancer.

“Patrick Kane is one of the most inspirational athletes. Watching him on the ice is elegant. It’s insanely beautiful,”
Agnoletti says. “Then to see how rough the game is, for him to demonstrate the amount of elegance in his technique
and his stick-handling, it’s unreal.”

“Years ago, I used to look at Kobe Bryant, he’s so long and elegant, and I thought he would be such a beautiful ballet
dancer. Brian Boitano, I always saw his carriage and usage of arms were quite expressive, so I’m sure he had some
ballet training. The quarterback that failed the Niners, Colin Kaepernick, I feel as though he would have been a great
dancer because of his build.”

The Chicago Bears play in Soldier Field, about a mile from where the Joffrey performs. When injuries hit the Bears’
offensive line, Kyle Long was moved to tackle from guard and the promising young players was forced to learn a new
role quickly. It wasn’t easy for him — or quarterback Jay Cutler — but the Bears had to make the line work with the
personnel they had.

This next-man-up philosophy comes into play every day at the ballet. The Nutcracker runs throughout the month of
December, sometimes with two performances a day. The dancers have several roles throughout the run, keeping them
fresh. Sometimes, changes must be made at the last minute.

Edson Barbosa, a young dancer who shares his name and home country of Brazil with a UFC fighter, found this out
during the Nutcracker. The ballet is familiar to dancers because it is staged by nearly every ballet company every
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USA Today • February 19, 2016
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holiday season, so they can jump into roles they have never danced before after simply watching it in rehearsals and
performances. He already knows the base elements — the technique he needs for a pirouette doesn’t change from role
to role — but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

“Last week, I had a surprise new role. They said, ‘Edson, can you step in for this spot you’ve never done before? You
go tomorrow.’ It’s part of the job. Sometimes, it’s something you’ve never done before, but you have an idea, because
you’ve watched it before,” Barbosa says.

He found his way to dance when a ballet school director in Rio de Janeiro visited his school. His father wanted him to
do karate, but Barbosa was hooked on dancing.

He is just 21, but like many college basketball players considering their professional careers, Barbosa thinks about how
he must treat his body to ensure a long run. Ballet dancers can last until their early 40s.

“To be a successful dancer, it’s a mix of technique, and how you treat your body. I’ve seen dancers’ careers end at 32,
33, and I’ve seen dancers retire when they are 45,” he says. “It’s great. It means that he’s a really good dancer, and he
respected his body. It’s our machine.”

Barbosa, Agnoletti and Ciapponi all touched on the key to staying healthy and strong throughout the long season: class.
The Joffrey’s company classes cover warming up and technique, but aren’t mandatory. Think of it as batting practice or
a shoot around. Coming to class helps dancers focus beyond performances and rehearsals.

Ciapponi once hated class, but after dealing with injuries, she revels in going.

“When I take class, I feel like it’s strengthening me. When I used to dance in San Francisco, I thought, I don’t need
class! I was young. And now, I can’t even imagine not taking class. And it’s probably why I got injured. I never took
class, and I would just perform,” Ciapponi says.

Those injuries led Ciapponi to the edge of her dance career as she went through three surgeries. There are 26 bones in
the human foot. She had fractures in seven of them. Her Lisfranc joint was not doing of its job of holding the foot
together. She could barely walk after scar tissue amassed in one foot, much less dance.

She had to move back in with her parents in Canada and deal with the visa issues that come with being a Canadian
citizen working in the United States. She was in pain and unsure of her ability to dance again on the foot that had
betrayed her after supporting her for so many years. Somehow, Ciapponi remained confident, and she worked her way
back to en pointe.

Two weeks before the Joffrey was set to start rehearsals for the 2015-16 season, Wheater called her with a contract
offer.

Now she’s back to dancing, and back to the rituals that get her ready for performance. Like a baseball player working
his glove until it fits just so, Ciapponi readies her toe shoes. She goes through a new pair every performance, and the
shoes don’t come out of the box ready to go.

It’s two weeks before Christmas. Chicago still isn’t cold enough to feel like winter, but the city’s holiday events are in
full swing. Revelers are drinking beer from a boot at Christkindlmarket underneath the Picasso Statue in Daley Plaza, a
giant Christmas tree is lit up next to the Bean in Millennium Park, and at the Auditorium, Ciapponi is scheduled to don
the black and gold dress of the Spanish dancer again.
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USA Today • February 19, 2016
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In the bowels of the 126-year-old theater, she gets to work. Ciapponi unwraps her pair of custom shoes. She cuts them,
and removes a back nail. Next, she slices the back open, and sews it back up in a specific pattern she has honed over
years of dancing.

It’s a ritual. At the Nutcracker, little girls in sparkly, tulle dresses marvel at giant pictures of dancers and ask their
parents to buy ornaments of dancers and nutcrackers. Marble concession stands sell sugar cookies and Nutcracker-
themed drinks. At intermission, patrons run out to the lobby to mingle and eat. Dancers paint their faces and dress in
colorful costumes to get into character.

At Soldier Field, young fans in Bears jerseys marvel as Jay Cutler and Matt Forte warm up on the field, and fill up on
soda pop and pizza at halftime. Players trace eyeblack on their face and don jerseys to show their allegiance.

This too, is a ritual, a part of the way top athletes use their bodies to express themselves. The difference between
fouettes and grand jetes on the stage and spin moves and flying catches in sports are of degree, not kind. An NFL
player may tip-toe like a ballerina but the ballerina will surely explode up off the ground and soar through the air with
astonishing grace, landing gently on a foot full of scar tissue.
JOFFREY BALLET
Chicago Tribune • February 11, 2016

Review: Joffrey Ballet surpasses itself in 'Bold Moves'

BY LAURA MOLZAHN

At its best, dance is the most perfect of stage arts, sculpting entire worlds through the most ineffable means: color,
light, music, human movement. "Bold Moves" offers three especially demanding, beautiful and distinct visions. And on
Wednesday's opening night, the Joffrey Ballet and the Chicago Philharmonic met all their challenges with brio.

Through Feb. 21 at the Auditorium Theatre, "Bold Moves" features a formidable world premiere by British
choreographer Ashley Page. Just as knotted and thorny as its music, Thomas Ades' Violin Concerto ("Concentric
Paths"), "Tipping Point" mythologizes the physical, creating a cool, metaphysical universe ruling the actions of the
heavens, the earth and human beings alike. Jon Morrell's striking scenic design — five giant squares of weighty,
cracked mineral surfaces — brings home the conceit, aided by David Finn's lighting.

At the last minute, Page added an introductory section, set to Aphex Twin's eerie "Gwely Mernans." A good idea: This
piece for 12 relies for its impact on the visibility of its groups, which the introduction picks out using what seem the
searchlights of police helicopters. Two crucial men, toe to toe, try to throw each other off balance and, in the process,
achieve balance. Three women (the Fates?) are remote, mechanical, unified. A trio of two men and one woman embody
instability, and two couples bring in the human factor.

Though Page highlights physical principles — balance and imbalance, tension and release — the details of his
choreography go way beyond them. On opening night, I was astounded to see Fabrice Calmels throw Christine Rocas
(valiantly filling in for the injured April Daly) behind his back with a swift circle of one arm. They and the other
couple, Victoria Jaiani and Dylan Gutierrez, were both superhuman and utterly human. Kudos to them, to the mischief-
making Edson Barbosa and Alberto Velazquez, and to trio members Amanda Assucena, Yoshihisa Arai and Lucas
Segovia. This is a dance that will definitely reward future viewing.

Jiri Kylian's masterful "Forgotten Land," featuring his unique blend of ballet and modern dance, creates a world on a
human scale: psychological, emotional, yet colored by larger issues. Two inspirations lie behind this 1981 work: its
music, Benjamin Britten's 1940 "Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20," and Edvard Munch's 1899 painting "The Dance of
Life," showing three women at three stages.

With a brilliant alchemy, Kylian conjures them into a vision all his own, driven by Britten's amazing three movements,
which somehow capture the composer's horror at the imminent World War II, likened to the bloody heat and
destruction of a flippant affair, and its denouement. Anastacia Holden and Arai were striking as the flirtatious red
couple, while Rocas and Rory Hohenstein defined the clarity and softness of innocence.

Yuri Possokhov's "RAkU" (2011) delivers a narrative set in a Japan both concrete and mythical. Shinji Eshima's tailor-
made score unfortunately underlines the choreography's occasional exaggerations; working in complete tandem, they
hammer home the story. Yet its main elements are undeniably vivid: the soldiers' almost-comic might, the love between
the Princess and Samurai, and the Princess' final desolation, which Jaiani made not so much defiant as deeply tragic.