The first snowfall descends on Chicago, bringing with it the reality of the approaching holiday season and a hearty craving for diversions, rich foods and elaborate sweets. Enter the Joffrey’s annual sugar-encrusted treat, a Baroque construction of eye candy replete with children’s choruses, puppetry, the Chicago Sinfonietta, an immense Christmas tree on hydraulics, well over 100 young dancers and the entire Joffrey company dripping with frosting and lace. Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino’s vision of the European holiday standard injects Tchaikovsky’s most famous work with some good old-fashioned twentieth-century American athleticism. The divertissement is a mounting parade of jaw-dropping feats of flexibility and acrobatics—a healthy balance to the many hours of equally impressive physicality presented by the NFL you’re sure to gape at in the coming weeks. (Sharon Hoyer)
At the Auditorium Theater, 50 E Congress Parkway, (312)739-0120. December 11-27. $25-$100.
Complementary Opposites: A Preview of "Serenade" and "Of Mice and Men" by the Joffrey Ballet “Both [ballets] are trying to deal with a particular time: One by healing with the beauty of dance, the other by trying to create empathy for beaten-down humanity. Right now, we’re facing some of the same issues, such as huge migrations from the workplace. Steinbeck shone a light on his time, and I hope we’re able to do the same.”
Not Quixotic Enough: A Review of the Joffrey Ballet's "Don Quixote" at the Lyric Opera House Performance-wise, the Joffrey Ballet's production of Yuri Possokhov's “Don Quixote,” running through June 12 at the Lyric Opera House, is terrific, displaying the company’s trademark combination of sterling technique and dramatic flair. There’s not a false step (other than the pratfalls by the effete aristocrat, Gamache, played with clownish glee on six-inch heels by Fernando Duarte) or an inelegant line…
