The Green Table - ballet by Kurt Jooss (Joffrey Ballet 1982 TV)

ballet: 35 minutes
interview/documentary on "The Green Table" and Kurt Jooss: 20 minutes

The Green Table

Danse Macabre in Eight Scenes

(Created between two wars as a memorial for the Unknown)

Book and Choreography - Kurt Jooss


The Green Table is a pacifist work depicting the inhumanities and corruption of war. It was created in 1932 for the International Competition of Choreography in Paris, where it won first prize.

The Joffrey Ballet production of The Green Table was first telecast on the PBS series, "Dance in America", in 1982, directed by Emile Addino. This broadcast I taped on VHS and transfered to DVD recently, it is the one you view in this upload.


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JOFFREY BALLET: 'THE GREEN TABLE'

By ANNA KISSELGOFF

Published "New York Times": November 7, 1981


If you are planning to see just one ballet this year, make sure it is the Joffrey Ballet's revival of Kurt Jooss's ''The Green Table.'' Thursday night at the City Center, this powerful and humanist work was seen for the first time this season and with an absolutely splendid debut by Philip Jerry in the leading role of Death.

Mr. Jooss's 1932 Expressionist masterpiece about the horrors of war is so perfectly structured and so rich in imagery built into its very movement that nearly any of its performances will be foolproof. Yet now the Joffrey has come up with a slightly different production and what is almost a totally brand-new cast.

The impact is fantastic. There is new energy flowing through the entire ballet and nowhere is this more evident than in the allegorical figure of Death, as portrayed by Mr. Jerry. Unlike others in the role, he is not merely sinister. This is a young Death bristling with vitality and therefore all the more dangerous. The suddenness of his movements is terrifying, every flexing of a muscle seems to have a snap. There is a driving and proper weight to his stamping march in place that makes his metaphorical pursuit of humankind seem relentless.

The production, newly supervised by Anna Jooss Markard after her father's death in 1979, has a few slight changes. One is to have some of the main characters, including the women, also play the masked diplomats who gather around the green table in the prologue and epilogue, as in the original 1932 cast. This was done at Mrs. Markard's request.

Thus, if one looked hard at the diplomats during the curtain calls when the masks were off, one could see Glenn Dufford, who had played the profiteer, Beatriz Rodriguez, who had been the resistance fighter, and Valmai Roberts, the old mother.

Miss Rodriguez, incidentally, gave her own powerful performance imbued with astonishing dramatic vigor. The masculine barrel turns she performed also seemed new. Mr. Dufford was perfect, dancing with a spring that illustrated the profiteer's slippery nature.

In general the men were better than the women, who tend to be a bit too classical. But Miss Roberts and Carole Valleskey's young girl did nicely. James Canfield looked like a gleaming standard bearer with Mark Goldweber, Jerel Hilding and others making the faceless victims of war both individualized and stirring. The coarse touch Luis Perez brought into the brothel scene was brilliant. In fact, the evening was deeply moving.

Another first of the season was Gerald Arpino's ''Fanfarita,'' a trifle now seen in a simplified version and danced a bit roughly by Luis Fuente, with Denise Jackson and Ann Marie De Angelo. The young Julian Montaner made a fine debut in the male quartet of ''Postcards.'' With his grace and fine placement, he is a special find.

Mr. Arpino's very classy adagio act, ''Epode,'' was also danced beautifully by Patricia Miller, Mr. Canfield, Mr. Jerry Mr. Hilding and Andrew Levinson.