Featured facts about The Joffrey Ballet

Grammy-Award winner Thomas Newman brought his film composition skills to ballet, creating the soundtrack for Of Mice and Men—part of the Northrop program. Newman’s Academy Award-winning soundtracks include Finding Nemo, The Shawshank Redemption, Little Women, and Skyfall. 

Although the novel Of Mice and Men ends in a tragedy, The Joffrey Ballet and Thomas Newman wanted to tell the story of Lenny and George in the frame of friendship. Working in collaboration, choreographer Cathy Marston and composer Newman found themselves blending their interpretations of the classic words by author John Steinbeck. It’s the momentum in the music that Marston says really allowed her to propel the story’s takeaway—the value of friendship.

Northrop audiences last saw The Joffrey Ballet in 2019 in a work that honored another literary classic—Anna Karenina. An audience favorite, The Joffrey Ballet has performed at Northrop a total of fifteen times, with their first-ever appearance on the Northrop stage in 1976. 

The Times Are Racing—danced in sneakers and streetwear to the second half of electronic musician Dan Deacon’s America album—seamlessly blends classical ballet, contemporary ballet, tap, and jazz. This final piece concludes a Northrop program that Artistic Director Ashley Wheater describes as a “mixed bag".

Balanchine’s Serenade was his first original full-length ballet in the United States. In this program, The Joffrey Ballet combines this iconic work with the Minnesota premiere of Of Mice and Men—almost one year after it made its world premiere at the Lyric Opera House in Chicago.