Joffrey Ballet Renews San Diego Romance With Diaghilev Program as Centerpiece

When the Joffrey Ballet returns to San Diego tonight for a four-performance run at the Civic Theatre, it will be a homecoming of sorts for the company and an opportunity for San Diego balletomanes to renew an ongoing love affair with the first world-class dance troupe to include the city on its regular touring schedule.

“Joffrey started here (with the San Diego Foundation for the Performing Arts) the same year it started the bicoastal arrangement with Los Angeles, so we’ve had a special bond since 1983,” said Suzanne Townsend of San Diego Performances, local sponsors of the Joffrey. “After the glitz and glamour of L.A., and all the rigors of touring, they like to come here. It’s like a safe haven.”

“We’ve always loved dancing in San Diego,” said Joffrey artistic director Gerald Arpino by telephone from Houston. “Our romance with San Diego is an extension of our bicoastal commitment, and the audiences are wonderful to us.”

When Joffrey began its association with San Diego, Townsend and Danah Fayman were the dynamic duo who made it happen. Their pioneer efforts to package big-league dance as a series in San Diego are “very special” because of the scale and scope of their undertaking, Arpino said.

What’s on tap from the Joffrey this week?

“I wanted the Joffrey to do an all-Diaghilev evening because that reconstruction was so important to Robert Joffrey,” said Townsend, who prides herself on taking an active role in selecting the repertory shown in San Diego. “The company wasn’t here last year when it was their major artistic purpose.”

Consequently, a Diaghilev program is the centerpiece of this visit. Among the treasures on the historic program are “L’Apres Midi d’Un Faune” and “Le Sacre du Printemps,” both by Vaslav Nijinsky, and Leonide Massine’s “Parade.” All three works are San Diego premieres, scheduled for 8 p.m. performances Wednesday and Friday.

Thursday’s mix (repeated at 2 p.m. Friday) will feature the local debut of Eugene Loring’s classic, “Billy the Kid,” Frederick Ashton’s “Monotones II,” and a pair of works by Arpino never seen in San Diego before: “Sea Shadow” and “Viva Vivaldi.”

“It takes a lot of shuffling, but you need to be thinking about growth when you plan the programs,” Arpino said.

Because he likes to think of his troupe as a catalyst for growth in regional dance, Arpino was ecstatic to learn that local troupe Three’s Company will make its maiden appearance in New York this week, and that newcomers like Malashock and Company are emerging on the San Diego dance scene.

“That’s why Bob (the late founding director, Robert Joffrey) and I accepted the arrangement,” Arpino said, referring to the troupe’s getting involved with San Diego or any community. “Our vision has always been bigger than the company. It’s about the American dance scene. It had to be.” The company was created by the only two American directors of a major American ballet company, he added.

The troupe is dedicating this season to Robert Joffrey, who died in March, 1988.

In August, Joffrey will enter into an agreement that will keep the company on the West Coast for six more weeks each year.

“We’ve had friends at Cal State (Los Angeles) for years,” Arpino said, “and recently the chancellor, said, ‘What if I could offer you a residency here?’ So they built a magnificent studio for us on campus, and we’ll be mounting new works there. We won’t be working with the students, but they’ll have the ability to observe and learn and study--and we’ll have the ability to work without disturbances.

“I worked in Iowa (at the University of Iowa) for four weeks, and we were able to mount our ‘Nutcracker.’ Of course, they helped underwrite it. It’s a tremendous gift.”

As Arpino sees it, this kind of kinship with a university can be a boon to under-funded dance troupes.

“Joffrey is always a pathfinder, looking for new ways of raising money for dance companies,” he said. “Once the smaller companies see us doing it, it starts to catch on.”