Next month, several American ballet companies will gather for the Gerald Arpino Chicago Centennial Celebration in honor of one of Joffrey Ballet’s founders and choreographers.
The Gerald Arpino Foundation will present two programs at the Auditorium Theatre featuring several of Arpino’s most recognized and influential works that he created throughout is fifty year career.
Gerald Arpino Chicago Centennial Celebration
PROGRAM A – September 23, 2023
Birthday Variations (1986) was commissioned by Becky D’Angelo as a birthday present to her husband, Dino, owner of Chicago’s Civic Opera House and a fan of Giuseppe Verdi’s music, featured in this work.
Sea Shadow (1962), set to music by Maurice Ravel, is Arpino’s romantic ode to Ondine, a young man on the beach who is enamored with a shadow from the sea in the guise of a beautiful creature.
L’Air D’Esprit (1978), set to music from Giselle by Adolphe Adam, is a romantic and classical work in the traditional pas de deux form and a tribute to the ballerina Olga Spessivtzeva, one of Nijinski’s partners before the fall of Czarist Russia.
RUTH, Ricordi per Due (2004) is an elegy to music by Tomasso Albinnoni and Arpino’s final work, commissioned and underwritten by Barbara Levy Kipper in honor of her mother, Ruth Doctoroff Levy.
Suite Saint-Saëns is Arpino’s 1978 masterwork, a showcase of classical movement in neoclassical style that epitomized the choreographer’s way of moving in the ’80s—with speed, energy and quality—set to Camille Saint-Saëns.
PROGRAM B – September 24, 2023
- Eugene Ballet
Reflections (1971) is a neoclassical, pure dance ballet and a perfect example of the Arpino style—high lifts, a flying pace and classic beauty. This fast-paced and physically challenging ballet is set to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Variations on a Rococo Theme for Violoncello and Orchestra.”
- Complexions Contemporary Ballet
Valentine (1971), set to music by Jacob Druckman, is a quirky and humorous look at the battle of the sexes using a boxing arena as the setting for staccato and contemporary movement.
Round of Angels (1983) is an emotional ballet featuring a couple, destined to part, surrounded by five broken-winged angels. Set to the haunting Adagietto from Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, this work is dedicated to the memory of James R. Howell, a Joffrey member and Arpino’s lifelong friend and artistic associate.
L’Air D’Esprit (1978), set to music from Giselle by Adolphe Adam, is a romantic and classical work in the traditional pas de deux form and a tribute to the ballerina Olga Spessivtzeva, one of Nijinski’s partners before the fall of Czarist Russia.
Light Rain (1981), which Arpino created for The Joffrey Ballet’s Silver Anniversary to showcase the company’s new young dancers and represent their youth and energy, is set to music by Douglas Adamz and Russ Gauthier and remains among Arpino’s most popular works.
Featured Photo for the Gerald Arpino Chicago Centennial Celebration of Joffrey Ballet’s Amanda Assucena and Alberto Velazquez in Birthday Celebration. Photo by Cheryl Mann.
