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In 1995 the Joffrey Ballet, long a major presence on the American dance scene, ran out of money, shut down its New York City studio, stopped touring and relocated to Chicago. But instead of sulking, artistic director Gerald Arpino rolled up his sleeves and painstakingly built up a loyal audience in his new hometown while breathing new life into a seemingly moribund troupe. The Joffrey returned in triumph to Washington last fall, performing George Balanchine's demanding Square Dance with daredevil flair at the Kennedy Center's Balanchine Celebration. The resurrection continues in Chicago Oct. 11-14 with The Nijinsky Mystique, a season-opening triple bill of ballets by Vaslav Nijinsky, the most renowned dancer of the 20th century. The performances will include his once scandalous, now classic Afternoon of a Faun and controversial reconstructions of his long-lost choreography for The Rite of Spring and Jeux--exactly the sort of imaginative programming that put the Joffrey on the map back in its glory days. Four more programs will be seen in Chicago later this season, among them a revival in April of founder Robert Joffrey's psychedelic Astarte, which made the cover of TIME back in 1968--the first ballet ever to do so. Nice to see his company back on its toes.
CRITIC'S PICK
Taking His Place In the Spotlight
Ethan Stiefel, the greatest American-born male ballet dancer since Edward Villella, has appeared in a dazzlingly wide range of works since joining American Ballet Theatre in 1997--Le Corsaire, Billy the Kid, Balanchine's Apollo, Twyla Tharp's Push Comes to Shove--performing them all with a casual virtuosity and unmannered grace worthy of Fred Astaire. On Oct. 26, Stiefel adds a new role to his repertoire: the male lead in Dim Lustre, Antony Tudor's rarely seen, piercingly Proustian tale of remembered love. It's part of A.B.T.'s New York City winter season (Oct. 23-Nov. 4), which also features the world premiere of Clear, the latest work by the much talked-about Australian choreographer Stanton Welch, and the company premiere of Balanchine's Symphony in C.
BOOKS
BIGGEST BUZZ
A Novel View of Familiar Woes
Can a book about the discontents of three grown siblings and their aging, truculent parents be the Next Big American Novel? What if the book courses through the sorrows of marriage, the black comedies of sex, the mental chaos of old age and the surreal misfortunes of free-market Lithuania? What if it boasts some of the most lustrous writing of any novel in years? What we're asking is whether Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections (Farrar Straus; 528 pages; $26) will become that rare thing, a literary work that everybody's reading? A lot of people are saying yes. The season's other anticipated novels include The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer, Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende, Half a Life by V.S. Naipaul and The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa.
CRITIC'S PICK
T.R. Rides Again