.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} As the sun set over downtown Des Moines, dancers gracefully and energetically performed five classical to contemporary pieces for about 8,000 people gathered on the lawn south of the John and Mary Pappajohn Education Center.

The hour and a half performance on June 29 by The Joffrey Ballet encompassed dances from “The Nutcracker” and “Billboards,” two highly successful ballets commissioned by the University of Iowa’s Hancher Auditorium at key times in the Joffrey’s history. A new Latin-flavor piece represented Hancher’s support of the Joffrey’s new works, which have been visionary for ballet.

The premiere performance in Des Moines was one of five that took place throughout Iowa from June 29 to July 7 as part of Hancher’s 35th anniversary celebration.

This marked the first time an American ballet company had performed a free outdoor tour and was another example of Iowa’s unique relationship with the Chicago-based Joffrey Ballet. The tour – which also went through Council Bluffs, Muscatine, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City – further showcased Hancher’s efforts to bring professional ballet to Iowa and Joffrey’s role in encouraging dance in the state.

“I think people in Iowa are proud to be able to say something like this happened in their state,” said Charles Swanson, executive director of Hancher. “It really shows that the arts make a difference and people need this sort of thing to live in a state like this. It promotes everything – diversity, inclusiveness, well-being.”

The tour required raising more money than Hancher’s past commissions, with $900,000 going toward building and moving a rock-concert-like stage, supplying backstage amenities, paying the Joffrey’s fee and planning for two and a half years.

Yet the effects of the nine-day tour could be long-lasting.

Swanson said businesses were eager to support the tour, because it’s an example of a quality-of-life amenity they can use to attract potential employees. Mary Keough Lyman, a longtime Joffrey board member and an Iowa City resident, said that after the Joffrey premiered “The Nutcracker” in Iowa City in the late 1980s, thousands of children began signing up for dance lessons and several dance schools opened.

Several prominent Des Moines residents became involved with the project as well, including Nancy Krause, who co-chaired the fund-raising campaign with Lyman, and Susan Burt, who hosted a party for the dancers at the Des Moines Art Center.

Krause, who said the community responded favorably to her donation requests, added, “It was a great opportunity for our state, and I hope more people now will take the opportunity to see them perform if and when they come back to Hancher again.”

“I have never heard of this kind of relationship with a major ballet company and a state that isn’t the home state of that company,” Lyman said.

The prelude

Hancher first hosted The Joffrey Ballet in 1974, two years after the auditorium opened. Since then, the classically trained dancers, who perform a wide range of dances, have visited Iowa more than 16 times, giving more than 100 performances.

When the Joffrey, then based in New York City, returned to Hancher for the third time in 1978, a blizzard left the troupe’s costumes and set stranded in Ohio. Determined to perform, the dance company asked the community to provide props and costumes.

“Everybody just rallied,” said Cameron Basden, who was then a Joffrey dancer and now serves as acting artistic director. “It became such a big part of bringing the production and performance to fruition. You could tell this is one great community.”

During the summers of 1982 and ’83, the Joffrey II, a small group of dancers a level below the main company, resided in Iowa City and gave small performances throughout the state.

Around this same time, Lyman, who had been living in London and seeing ballet performances weekly before returning to Iowa City, met Joffrey co-founder Gerald Arpino and the two became close friends. Arpino asked Lyman to serve on the Joffrey board. This role, which she served for the past 25 years, has further solidified the relationship between the Joffrey and Iowa as she has encouraged the ballet company to perform in Iowa and helped raise funds in the state to support it.

During the 1980s and ’90s, an Iowa family and Hancher commissioned three ballets, which Swanson said “in essence saved the Joffrey.”

Michael and Barbara Gartner, a prominent Des Moines family, were the lead donors for “The Heart of the Matter” in 1985, and then in 1987 Hancher raised the funds for Joffrey to produce its own “Nutcracker” performance.

“‘Nutcrackers’ are sort of the bread and butter of ballet companies,” Lyman said, “because they’re extremely popular with families over the holidays.”

The Joffrey needs to bring in about $12 million to $13 million in revenues each year, Lyman said, and ticket sales from “The Nutcracker” alone bring in close to $2 million annually, which is one-third to one-half of Joffrey’s total ticket sales revenues.

It also was the last performance company co-founder Robert Joffrey oversaw before he passed away.

In 1993, a time when the Joffrey was struggling to survive in New York City, Hancher commissioned the first full-length rock ballet, “Billboards,” featuring dances set to music by Prince. At the time, Lyman said, public funding was shifting from the arts to social programs and the Joffrey was competing with other major ballet companies in the city to get grants and donations. It was already considering the option of relocating.

The rock ballet “was a smash success,” she said. “It opened in January. It was freezing cold, 10 below. And dance critics from all over the country descended on Iowa City.” The new ballet’s popularity kept the Joffrey touring to sold-out auditoriums for several months, Lyman said, and gave the company enough funds to become established in Chicago.

“Arpino often says to me that Iowa saved the Joffrey,” Lyman said, “because had we not commissioned ‘Billboards,’ it would have been a really tough call whether we made it the next two years before we could relocate.”

These past experiences have helped give the Joffrey a reputation for innovative work. “This tour is an example of how [Hancher leaders] just make things possible,” Basden said, “[They] always have a vision of something more.”

The performance

After a “Nutcracker” performance two and a half years ago, Swanson proposed the idea of a free tour in Iowa to Joffrey leaders over dinner.

The idea evolved from having just 16 Joffrey dancers perform to bringing the entire company of 41 and giving five free outdoor performances.

“We have had this relationship, but people across the state have not had the opportunity to experience something like the Joffrey,” Swanson said.

Unlike past fund-raising campaigns, when they went door to door asking hundreds of families to give donations of $1,000, Lyman said the organizers also went to businesses to ask for larger contributions. “Because this had never been done before, you had to explain exactly what was going to happen,” Lyman said, “but as soon as they understood the impact of this project, people were pretty excited and wanted to be involved.”

The organizers fell shy of their $900,000 goal, so Hancher Auditorium chipped in about $50,000.

The logistics of the tour were equally challenging.

It required 12 semitrailer trucks to haul the outdoor theater and accommodate 41 dancers with dressing rooms, physical therapy rooms and warm-up studios. The four dressing room trailers they used were from the “Desperate Housewives” set.

To handle the stage setup, organizers hired Levitation, which had only worked on rock concerts before. Technicians had to adjust the stage at each location to make it level and deal with the logistics of lighting, sound and even details such as carpeting the backstage so the dancers wouldn’t walk in their ballet shoes across the grass.

Encore

Today the Joffrey is in a financial upswing, with corporate donations up 73 percent in the 2005-2006 season compared with the year before, according to Lyman’s figures. Ticket sales were up 19 percent and full-season subscription sales rose 30 percent.

The company is also in the middle of a $35 million capital campaign, most of which will go toward constructing a building, The Joffrey Tower, to house its performance studios and offices, a black-box theater, and retail and condominium space in downtown Chicago.

In Iowa, Swanson already is considering options for Hancher Auditorium’s 40th anniversary, and Lyman is hoping the Joffrey’s version of Sir Frederick Ashton’s “Cinderella,” which premiered last fall, will be performed in Iowa.

“At this point, we don’t know what’s next,” Swanson said. “We’re so pleased with this that we would like to take it further, but at the same time, this thing would be very difficult to replicate.”