User:Mltupot/Joffrey Ballet School

When Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino began the Joffrey Ballet School in 1953, they envisioned a place where passionate dancers could be transformed into versatile, individualistic artists able to collaborate and evolve fluidly in a fast-changing society. They believed in open thinking and were not strangers to current issues. They wanted to teach their students to viscerally reach their audiences. At the time, it was a thoroughly American concept.

Robert Joffrey took each classic ballet technique and put his own fluid style together. He knew how the body worked and kept his students striving for more. He believed the student must trust the teacher. And the teacher must know the student. He was a perfectionist, but he wanted to make ballet accessible to all who desired it.

in 1995, seven years after Robert Joffrey’s death, Gerald Arpino moved the company to Chicago, leaving the then 42-year-old school in NYC. In January 2009, the Joffrey Ballet company in Chicago launched its own official school called the Academy of Dance.

However, the original Joffrey Ballet School remains in its Greenwich Village location, 434 Avenue of the Americas, at 6th Avenue and 10th Street. And it continues to strive for its founders' vision, realizing purity and form through a well-rounded dance curriculum that includes rigorous training in classical and contemporary ballet.