Prince and the Pauper : Dance: The purple one provides the music and Iowa supporters of the Joffrey provide the funding. The show, ‘Billboards,’ may be the company’s salvation.

The story of how the Joffrey Ballet came here recently to present the world premiere of the full-length “Billboards,” with music by Prince, begins in Los Angeles.

It seems Patricia Kennedy, an L.A. member of the Joffrey board, had leased one of her two Bel-Air homes to Prince. “For our special 1991 gala, I had a couple of tables and a cancellation, and asked if he’d like to come,” Kennedy said. “This happens to have been the first ballet Prince had been to, which he shared with me.

“He was very curious as to how choreography was made and why the orchestra was in the pit. He was fascinated. I said to him, ‘You’ve never done anything for ballet?’ and he said, ‘No one’s ever asked me.’ ”

So Kennedy asked and, according to her, Prince said, “I’d like to skip dinner and go home and write some music for the Joffrey.” And so, the story goes, Prince went home and wrote an expanded version of his song “Thunder” for the company.

The timing was fortuitous. The company’s severe money woes had become public knowledge and the previous year a ruinous bi-coastal takeover battle had pitted artistic director Gerald Arpino against his own board members. Arpino prevailed--retaining control of the company he and the late Robert Joffrey established in 1956--but lost some big-bucks patronage.

The next big Joffrey ballet was supposed to be “Cinderella.” Arpino wanted to do a new production of the Frederick Ashton classic. He’d persuaded longtime company supporters in Iowa to raise $300,000 for the $2-million ballet. But the Joffrey could no longer afford it.

Wallace Chappell, director of the University of Iowa’s Hancher Auditorium, knew they had to decide on something pronto. “I had a lot of restless donors asking, ‘Where’s my money going to go?’

“I kept pounding away on Arpino,” Chappell said, asking him to ask Kennedy to ask Prince if the Joffrey could use his music gratis for a full-length ballet.

Said Arpino: “I had a desperate weekend, trying to muster up a creative concept that would satisfy the Iowa contributors to keep their investment in the Joffrey.” He came up with “Billboards,” and asked Kennedy if she would contact Prince’s office.

And Prince said yes, eventually offering the use of 12 of his songs. Most of the local funders remained committed to the company. “Iowans are very loyal,” Chappell said. “We lost about 10% of the (“Cinderella”) money.”

As Arpino would have it, “Cinderella found her Prince in Iowa.”

Arpino nursed the new ballet along, saving money by asking the four choreographers--Laura Dean, Charles Moulton, Margo Sappington and Peter Pucci--to use the same lighting designer, Howell Binkley, who had worked with Pucci’s troupe. Similar economies applied to the costumes. The set is minimal--Joffrey photographer Herbert Migdoll, with the help of the Gannett Outdoor Group, designed five enormous, gorgeous backdrops: One just says “Billboards,” and the other four juxtapose each choreographer’s name with Prince’s. There are also a few chairs and a gold drapery, and the whole thing can be “loaded in” in one day, an important cost-cutter during a big tour.

Prince was supposed to attend the Jan. 28 premiere. He reserved five seats and a limousine to bring his party from Cedar Rapids airport to Hancher Auditorium.

The prospect of having the elusive rock star in their midst pushed the audience’s opening-night anticipation just a little bit higher than usual. But Iowa City is used to dance premieres. Hancher Auditorium commissions many, and not just from the Joffrey, which was about to begin its 52nd performance there since 1974.

Thanks to a program in which Hancher Auditorium acts not only as presenter but as co-producer, this small town has nurtured new work with a commitment rare among communities of its size. Iowa City has taken the Joffrey to its heart, and helped it survive. And never before has survival been such an issue for the debt-ridden company, a leading repository of ballets by the century’s greatest choreographers. But “Billboards” is now the troupe’s best hope.

“Where’s Prince?” a woman asked. “He’s in Paisley,” a Joffrey board member said. “Something happened to his flight.”

He was actually not in Minnesota at his hit factory, Paisley Park, but in Los Angeles, and the Joffrey heard he wasn’t coming when the limo company phoned that he’d canceled the car.

But Prince sent flowers, lots of flowers. Huge displays, tied with pink-and-gold paisley ribbons, to Arpino, who conceived of “Billboards,” to its four choreographers and, to every one of its 37 dancers, a single rose.

Nothing succeeds like success, especially when the success is home-grown, like the corn and alfalfa just five minutes’ drive from Hancher. Word was out that “Billboards” was hot, and the 2,650-seat house was sold out--95% of capacity. Thursday night, Hancher director Chappell bragged, “Billboards” out-pulled Metallica at the university’s basketball stadium, and Gloria Steinem too.

Welcome to Iowa City, population 60,000, almost half of them students. The natives are almost ridiculously well-educated, with more college graduates per capita than any other U.S. city and the highest reading scores among high school seniors in the nation.

Besides, says ballet teacher and early Joffrey dancer Francoise Martinet, “Iowans are nobody’s fools.” She moved here from New York 17 years ago for a temporary job at the university’s dance department, and decided to stay.

Poets and novelists come to the famed Iowa Writers Workshop (which accepts only 5% of all applicants) and never leave town; every waiter, it is said, is working on a novel, and the walls of the Linn Street Cafe are lined with framed book jackets--workshop success stories.

This receptive and relatively affluent audience makes possible the special relationship between the Joffrey and Iowa, a mutual cultivation society that endures in fat times and lean. Hancher commissions work, the Iowa chapter of Friends of the Joffrey raises the money and the University of Iowa Foundation administers it. For “Billboards,” which cost $950,000, a third of the money was Iowan.

By the third performance of “Billboards,” the audience’s enthusiasm was growing too; the Iowans stood and clapped for 10 minutes, and the dancers did an encore. It all was reminiscent of the palmy, early days of rock ballet.

Beginning in 1967, with Robert Joffrey’s psychedelic, multimedia “Astarte,” the Joffrey has tried to capture not only the spirit of the times, but a youthful audience as well. Like Twyla Tharp’s graffiti-laced “Deuce Coupe,” set to the music of the Beach Boys, and Arpino’s “Trinity,” “Billboards” seemed to touch a collective nerve.

The Saturday after the opening, Arpino was in his Hancher dressing room, three performances down, two to go, satisfied contributors all over the place, good reviews in the papers, re-energized board members on both coasts. The air was thick with self-congratulation, relief and the possibility that, as C. C. Conner, executive director of the company put it, “Billboards” might just be the Joffrey’s salvation. It needs salvation, with its $1.2-million debt; a pending lawsuit for $120,000 filed by L.A.’s Wiltern Theatre after the troupe canceled, blaming the riots; other creditors, and the need, now, to put everything on a cash-first footing.

Chappell has decided that “Billboards” should come back. An Amsterdam presenter was checking out the show, as was one from St. Louis; so was “Dance in America,” the prestigious PBS program. And Conner was on the verge of a New York meeting with City Center officials and hoping for a Los Angeles season as well.

“I think we’re on a roll,” Arpino said. “I think all dance was in danger of losing its audience before ‘Billboards.’ No one will change the scene like ‘Billboards’ changes it. I’m thrilled that young people can relate to it and discover the art of dance. They’re going to be so anxious to explore dance now. I’ve always said I’m like the Pied Piper.”

And someday, will Prince come? Arpino picked up a small white box, tied with purple ribbon and adorned with purple flowers. “I got him a beautiful white silk tie,” Arpino said. “I’m saving it for him for whenever he wants.”

The Joffrey Ballet is scheduled to perform in Chicago (March 16-21), Washington (June 1-6) and San Francisco (July 5-18).