The Robert Joffrey Ballet
The Robert Joffrey Ballet at the 1962 summer workshop on Rebekah Harkness’s estate in Watch Hill, R.I.,
where guest choreographers Alvin Ailey, Brian Macdonald, Fernand Nault, and Donald Saddler worked with the dancers. Among those pictured are
Dance Division administrative assistant Suzanne (Hammons) Daone (second from left), Rhodes (third from left), Helgi Tomasson (fifth from
left), and Rhodes’s wife Lone Isaksen (third from right).
The spring of 1962 brought changing fortune to Joffrey's company.
He had renamed his company the Robert Joffrey Ballet and had already completed six national tours with no external financial assistance.
Joffrey knew that he had to obtain money from some source as creativity could not be stifled due to lack of resources.
His company had now grown to 38 members including a small orchestra.
The ballet owned a repertoire of 21 ballets including some by the American choreographers Todd Bolender and Job Sanders.
Perhaps the biggest change of fortune for the company came when they were taken under the wing of a wealthy arts patron, Rebekah Harkness
Kean.
Along with the Harkness Foundation which was founded by Mrs. Kean in 1959 to help American dance, Robert Joffrey was now able to freely work
on his first love, choreography and dance.
The Harkness Foundation also sponsored Jerome Robbins's Ballet USA which was an African tour by as well as the late summer seasons of dance in Central Park's Delacorte Theater. The sponsorship and of the Harkness relationship toward Joffrey and his company resulted in great things.
They were invited to spend the summer of 1962 in the Harkness estate at Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Six choreographers - Joffrey, Arpino, Nault,
Donald Saddler, Brian MacDonald, and created a variety of works during that summer.
All dances were then previewed that fall and those which were deemed a success were added to Joffrey's company's repertoire complete with set
and costumes courtesy of the Harkness Foundation.
Additionally Joffrey's company toured the Middle East and Southeast Asia sponsored in part by the President's Special International Program
for Cultural Presentations.
His company was able to do work such as this due to ties within the Foundation. Upon concluding a second summer at Watch Hill, the company
appeared in a Ballet Gala program at the Harkness Dance Festival in Central Park.
|