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Hancher bringing Joffrey Ballet on 5-stop Iowa tour

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By Charlotte Eby | Wednesday, March 29, 2006 |

DES MOINES — The prestigious Joffrey Ballet is planning a series of free outdoor performances across the state in the summer of 2007, including a date in Muscatine.

The performances are part of the 35th anniversary of Hancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa.

Hancher executive director Chuck Swanson said the long relationship with the ballet company led to partnering with them for the performances. Hancher premiered Joffrey’s “Nutcracker” and the ballet “Billboards.”

“For the 35th, we wanted to make it a big celebration,” he said. “We really wanted to go out extra and do something very unusual.”

Mary Keough Lyman, a member of the Joffrey Ballet board of directors from Iowa City, said Joffrey II has performed in Muscatine in the past, and many Muscatine residents have attended Joffrey performances at Hancher. “We are extremely excited about performing in Muscatine. It’s such a beautiful city,” she said.

Swanson said the idea of free ballet performances is uncommon because the events are expensive to put on. Colleagues from around the country have told him that nothing like this has been done before, he said.

“We can reach so many people who typically would have never been able to experience this. So many people have never seen a professional ballet company before,” he said.

Hancher’s budget for the events is $650,000, paid for in part by private funds and grants. About 75 percent of the total cost has been raised so far, officials say. They will create outdoor theaters for each of the five events, which are expected to draw crowds of several thousand.

Despite the difficult logistics of staging each performance, Swanson said they are up to the challenge.

“We’ve got a great staff. We’ve got a great troupe of people who are really behind this project,” he said.

An outdoor site for the Muscatine performance has not yet been chosen, but should be selected in the next couple of months, Swanson said.

“We’ve got to have a big green space. The stage is very large. It’s a 40-foot-by-40-foot stage. Along with that, we want to be able to accommodate a large audience,” he said.

Charlotte Eby can be contacted at

(515) 243-0138 or chareby@aol.com.

Tour dates

2007 Joffrey Ballet performances in Iowa:

June 29 – Des Moines

July 1 — Council Bluffs

July 3 — Muscatine

July 6 — Cedar Rapids

July 7 — Iowa City