In 2017, the Joffrey Ballet gave the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts close to a thousand bankers boxes overflowing with more than sixty years’ worth of correspondence, costumes, props and posters, plus thousands of reels and microfilms. It was the largest archive the New York Public Library had received in ten years. Linda Murray, curator of the library’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division, said it took three days to pack up everything from the Joffrey Tower in Chicago, but it was worth it. “It’s really exciting to be able to bring that part of history back,” Murray told Observer, “because it’s a company that I think is really underrepresented.”

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Here in New York City, we talk a lot about New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, but in many ways, the Joffrey (which also originated in the city) is the quintessential American ballet company. It was the first to perform at the White House and on television, the first to be featured on the cover of TIME Magazine and in a major motion picture (Robert Altman’s The Company) and the first to perform to rock and roll. It was rankless and inclusive, bicoastal and Midwestern. The story of the Joffrey runs alongside the broader story of the rise and fall and rebirth of ballet in the U.S., and yet it is seldom told.

Murray was eager to show off the depth of the treasures in the newly acquired archive and knew that Dr. Julia Foulkes, whom she had worked with on the 2018 exhibition “Voice of My City: Jerome Robbins and New York,” would be the ideal curator. Foulkes spent a year and a half gathering and organizing materials with the help of Nicole Duffy, former Joffrey........

© Observer