Ballet with a Savvy Street Beat

By Martha Duffy

It's rare to hear a wolf whistle from the crowd when the curtain goes up on an evening of ballet. But that's what happened last week at Minneapolis' Northrop Auditorium as the music of rock star Prince zoomed toward bombination. The occasion was Billboards, a new work presented by the Manhattan-based Joffrey Ballet in a frank attempt to link the world of ballet to the life of young people in the streets. The company desperately needs a hit, and Billboards -- loud, generous of spirit, heart-on-sleeve romantic -- looks to be it. Last week the 4,800-seat Northrop was nearly sold out. The kids in the balcony squealed as if at a rock concert, not only for Prince megahits like Purple Rain but for the Joffrey's male corps when they circled the stage in spectacular split leaps.

All dance troupes have been hit hard by the recession, and this company has been especially pressed since the death of founder Robert Joffrey in 1988. Temporary salvation came when new fan Prince (or Prince Rogers Nelson, as he is called in the program) donated several of his songs. Artistic director Gerald Arpino invited four choreographers to contribute: Laura Dean, Charles Moulton, Margo Sappington and Peter Pucci. None is known primarily for classical pieces, but all clearly responded well with the highly polished Joffrey dancers. The results vary in quality, but the whole evening reflects an enthusiastic effort to marry the discipline of the barre with the demon energy of the dance club.

Dean's Sometimes It Snows in April is the best. She begins by quoting what may be the signature image of classical dance: the hypnotizing line of ghostly maidens in La Bayadere, who crisscross the stage executing a simple pattern of stretches and bends. Later, Dean makes the same movements explode, with the women kicking high and the men cavorting, airborne, in cascades of split jumps.

Arpino was wise to put this little fancy first. Because the costumes are glistening white and the women wear chignons, the classical echoes are clear when the scene shifts to the street. Moulton, on the other hand, establishes himself on the corner right away. Thunder/Purple Rain is a variant on the familiar sex-and-salvation theme. Elizabeth Parkinson plays a sort of fairy who transforms bystanders into lovers with a wand crowned, rather like a car's hood ornament, by a heart. Unfortunately, Moulton makes the song Purple Rain into a dismal solo that looks arduous to dance and provides little enlightenment, emotional or otherwise.

Sappington's Slide is savvy show biz; maybe Jerome Robbins should take a bow too. In the finale, Pucci, who was an engaging clown with the Pilobolus troupe during the '80s, lightens things up with cheerful, back-lit aerobics. In a pas de deux that manages to be both steamy and droll, he may be offering an opinion on pointe work, particularly when he has the ballerina (Jodie Gates) aim her toe shoe into her prostrate partner's mouth.

Billboards, which the Joffrey will take on a 20-city tour over the next seven months, is hardly the first time ballet has reached out to pop. Balanchine used Gershwin, Paul Taylor the Andrews Sisters, Alvin Ailey Count Basie and others. And of course the great rock performers like Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger have set the standard of movement in that particular pop art. Still, the Joffrey evening radiates grace because it embraces a challenging world with very little in the way of snobbery or preconception.