Joffrey Regains Its Balance : Troupe Returns to L.A. on a More Secure Financial Footing

There’s nothing like beating back adversity to make a person feel heroic. Ask Gerald Arpino, artistic director of the Joffrey Ballet.

“People approach me differently now,” he says, referring to the aftermath of a failed hostile takeover that almost killed off the Music Center’s resident dance troupe last May, just as it was beginning its monthlong Pavilion engagement.

“Kids (ballet students) see me on the street and race over with that certain light in their eyes.”

Indeed, Agnes de Mille, Joseph Papp and Martha Graham, among others, rushed to applaud Arpino for thwarting an attempt by key board members and administration--alarmed over a $1.8-million deficit--to reorganize the bicoastal company and dilute his artistic sovereignty.

Arpino, who, with the late Robert Joffrey, founded the company 35 years ago, resigned rather than knuckle under. What’s more, he took all of Joffrey’s--and his ballets--with him. But after three weeks of headline-making turmoil, and no concessions, he returned in triumph.

“It was the principle of the thing,” the deceptively mild-mannered director says now. In his downtown hotel suite, he explains that if he had written the scenario “it would not have ended as well.

“There I was, with no thought of being a hero. But when the assault came I instinctively stood up to it. Bob (Joffrey, who died nearly three years ago) must have been with me in spirit. It was like an act of God, the kind of impulse that creeps up on soldiers in battle.”

Since childhood, combat has been no stranger to the 62-year-old Arpino.

“You know,” he says, about growing up in Staten Island where he was valedictorian of his high school class, “I come from a macho, Travolta-type family. So being in ballet was never easy. My brothers threw meatballs at me for merely uttering the word.”

He barely touches a Cobb salad brought up 20 minutes earlier. In an hour he will trot over to the Music Center for a rehearsal of “The Nutcracker,” opening Wednesday with 16 performances through Dec. 30.

Since the turmoil in May, he’s regrouped both the New York and Los Angeles boards of directors, now numbering a total of 80 members, and replaced executive director Penelope Curry--who left along with co-chairmen Anthony Bliss and David Murdock.

But Arpino has had to face some hard realities.

“Business is not as usual,” he says. “It can never be that again because we now have recognition of our ideals. Also, this shake-up has had a beneficial impact. Before it happened our administrative affairs were in disrepute, our financial responsibility went unaddressed.

“Our product is sound, it always has been. But our marketing, according to the new board, needs intensive work in order to bring the crowds to the box office.”

Accordingly, in radio and TV-conscious Los Angeles, the company’s publicity and advertising campaigns will be focused toward the electronic media in hopes of reversing a decline in subscribers.

When the company made its 1983 inaugural appearance as a Music Center resident, to the tune of an annual $1-million subsidy, it was the new kid on the block and got much attention. Gradually, though, audiences drifted away and attendance shrank 50%.

With the current crisis of arts funding and the high cost of presenting stage events in general, all dance companies are hard put to operate in the black. This year, Dance Theatre of Harlem was forced to suspend operations for six months. American Ballet Theatre is carrying nearly $5 million in debts and two weeks ago forced a number of cost-saving measures on its dancers.

In light of these economic realities, Arpino knows what his priorities must be. Instead of creating new ballets, “I’m busy choreographing an artistic board of directors, an artistic politic, putting myself on their side and vice versa,” he says. “Criticism is not a bad word. It’s part of dialogue. And I treat our meetings like rehearsals. We listen and evaluate and discuss everything. It’s democratic in the best sense. Silence, on the other hand, is dangerous.”

Much has been accomplished since the reorganization. Although a cash flow problem still exists, as it does with most companies, the debt has been reduced to $800,000 and the penalty and principal of a nearly $1-million tax liability paid off.

But each week now runs $90,000 in operating costs based on a 1990-91 budget that was trimmed by $1 million to $11.6 million. This has been achieved by dropping some of the weaker tour dates, freezing wages and cutting production corners.

Still, a buoyant Arpino reflects certain undeniable successes--not just in attracting new financial support but by earning critical kudos.

In September, the company made its Athens and Paris debuts, bringing to the French capital a Diaghilev bill that won a glorious reception--especially for a reconstruction of Vaslav Nijinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps,” the ballet that caused a riot 77 years ago at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees and had not been seen there since.

While former mega-funder David Murdock now does not donate a centime or participate in Joffrey benefit activities, Arpino points proudly to a sponsorship boom:

A record $2.6 million has been raised in the past few months with grants from Absolut Vodka ($300,000) and the Deutsch and Rigler Foundation ($250,000). An anonymous challenge grant ($500,000) came in just last month. And major backers have been found in Iowa City and San Francisco, he says.

Interim executive director Charles Raymond cites the acquisition of another anonymous donor whose consulting firm is “now doing a gangbusters job in development--attracting a large pool of smaller benefactors.” But all is not sugarplums and snowflakes.

The Music Center, for instance, delayed renewing the company’s contract after it expired June 30 until late fall. Verifying the Joffrey’s return to fiscal health, says Jim Black, vice president of administration and finance at the Music Center, was crucial to continuing sponsorship of the resident ballet company.

The new contract extends only for one year--the previous one guaranteed a three-year term--”and, yes, that makes us feel less supported,” says Arpino, mentioning the high-level meetings soon to take place with Music Center officials on what kind of, if any, longer-range plans there will be for the Joffrey.

“Stability is not easy to come by in Los Angeles, or anywhere in the country. The (Los Angeles Music Center) Opera is noticeably down in ticket sales right now. So is the Master Chorale. Even American Ballet Theatre is bearing a $5-million deficit.”

None of the Joffrey’s commitments go beyond one year. There is a February engagement in the State Theater at Lincoln Center and though it gives the company a bigger house and more high-priced seats, it is only a one-time run. (However, Arpino is already thinking about the next year and says the management plans to add a week, comprising a full month.)

Even the dancers’ recent contract covers only a year. They agreed to wage freezes and other cutbacks, according to Raymond, for 12 months. But not asking for benefits is in stark contrast to the acrimonious bargaining dispute waged last month by ABT dancers.

“The difference,” says Arpino, “is that we’re not adversaries, we’re a family and family members help each other.”

Meanwhile “The Nutcracker,” Robert Joffrey’s last effort for the company he devoted his life to and its most lucrative production, is making Arpino supremely happy. The box office took in a record $1 million from its three-week New York run at City Center. Although the company is only paid a fee in Iowa City, the nine-performance run there “went very well,” according to Raymond.

But even with the positive feedback from various cities, Arpino still sees Los Angeles as “critical to our growth and prospering. It presents our greatest challenge. Like the Joffrey, it has youth and vitality. We’re a perfect match.”