CANFIELD AND MILLER LEAVE JOFFREY

James Canfield and Patricia Miller, the popular Joffrey Ballet team that danced the leading roles in “Romeo and Juliet” on the opening night of the company’s January season at the Music Center, have quit and are moving to Portland, Ore.

Canfield and Miller are among six Joffrey dancers who left the company recently for what seem to be unrelated reasons. The others are Luis Perez, Edward Morgan, Eric Dirk and Elizabeth Molak.

Although Canfield and Miller each danced with other partners in the Joffrey, they became favorites with local audiences mainly as a team in a series of ballets by Joffrey associate director Gerald Arpino. Five ballets either created for or identified with them are scheduled during the Joffrey’s Sept. 25 to Oct. 6 season at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

In New York, Arpino insisted it was merely “coincidental” that the six dancers left the 40-member company at the same time and that “each of them is an artist of importance.

“I created roles for all of them,” he said, “and they’re just like family. But, as with your children, you must allow them to grow.”

Referring to a celebrated partnership at the Royal Ballet, Arpino called Miller and Canfield “the (Antoinette) Sibley and (Anthony) Dowell of this company. Of course I will feel their loss. They are very special artists to me.”

Partners off stage as well as on, Miller and Canfield have become principal dancers in Pacific Ballet Theatre, a 13-member regional company now in its third season. According to artistic director Gregory Smith, Miller and Canfield were guest artists twice during the last year--in Smith’s “Nutcracker” at Christmas and in the February repertory programs.

“They saw a young, exciting company and they saw they could contribute more than just dancing,” Smith commented in Portland. “James wants to choreograph, Patricia was impressed with the community and both will assist the teaching staff of the company school.”

In October, Miller and Canfield will dance on Pacific Ballet Theatre’s tour of Oregon and in Portland school performances, Smith said, and will be seen again in the November “Nutcracker” run. Smith also revealed that Dirk and his wife, Meg Potter, (formerly with American Ballet Theatre) are becoming members of the company at the same time.

Contacted at home in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Miller explained that she had become tired of living in New York (“We won’t miss it at all”) and that she had grown to love the Portland area. “It’s so beautiful, so scenic,” she said. “I’ve been in the Joffrey eight years and I’d just like some time away. Of course, I’m not saying I’m never going to go back--but I’m not one of those ambitious ballerinas struggling to get to the top, whatever the top is.”

Though Miller expressed no resentment toward Joffrey management, Canfield, contacted in Clearwater, Fla., said that “politics within the company” had frozen him out of coveted dramatic roles and left him “at a standstill” artistically. “Jerry (Arpino) was wonderful to me from day one, and made my career for me,” he declared. “But I wasn’t getting enough of the challenges I wanted--the acting parts. I didn’t want just to be ‘The Partner’ in the company.

“I feel that there’s a lot more that I can do if I get the chance,” he said. “There was a day when you had to be in New York to be a dancer, but you can go anywhere now and be what you want to be.”

For Perez, the decision to take a leave of absence from the Joffrey was not related to the actions of the other five dancers. “It was a complete coincidence,” he said by phone from New York. Perez left the company to play the role of Bernardo in a touring revival of “West Side Story” that also features Rex Smith and Leilani Jones.

“I always wanted to try speaking (on stage),” he said.

According to sources within the Joffrey, Molak is leaving the company to be with her family in Riverside, Calif., and Morgan wants to pursue other projects, including music video. Both were unavailable for comment.