On Point: Celebrating The Joffrey Ballet’s Classical Feats

As a cultural trailblazer, the Joffrey Ballet stands high en pointe. Cofounded in 1956 by Anver Bey Abdullah Jaffa Khan, aka Robert Joffrey, and Gerald Arpino, it was the first classical dance company to perform at the White House (during the Kennedy Administration), feature a ballet set to rock music (Astarte), and embrace multimedia. These feats and more are celebrated in “The Joffrey + Ballet in the U.S.” this fall at Wrightwood 659, a gallery in Chicago, where the company relocated from New York in 1995.

The exhibition is in honor of the company’s 70th anniversary, which kicked off last year at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and draws from the expansive Joffrey archive acquired by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division in 2017. Wrightwood’s presentation differentiates from the NYPL’s with the addition of original photography and mix-media works by Herbert Migdoll, who was the company photographer since the ’60’s and, later, its design director; they accompany some 200 additional items, including costumes, paintings, and an immersive video room. Four ballets are scheduled for the Joffrey’s 2025-2026 season.