Back on Pointe
This June, after a turnaround so remarkable that it has become a business school case study, the Joffrey Ballet celebrates its 50th anniversary—and its 11th year in Chicago. Behind the revival are a few good men, a powerful women’s board, and an extraordinary company of dancers.
(page 3 of 3)
A Chanel army takes charge| Courtesy of the Joffrey Ballet  |
| Joffrey teaching in New York in the 1950s |
"You know how that television show The View begins, with Barbara Walters saying, ‘I had this idea for a show,'" recalls Maureen Dwyer Smith, a Lake Forest philanthropist. "Well, I had this idea for a board. I imagined women of all ages and experiences working together."
And so the Joffrey Ballet Women's Board was born in 2000. When Smith came up with her plan, she was already a founder of the Joffrey's board of trustees. "I saw it through all its twists and turns, and the days when it was ‘Can everybody just throw in $1,000 to get us through the week?'" she says. "It was a mess."
At the start, Smith recognized a major issue. "There was no buzz about the Joffrey," she says. "The Joffrey had the most perfect dancing, performances of the highest quality. Yet zero buzz."
A women's board, Smith thought, would not let this civic opportunity "fritter away. We needed recognition first and then money. There are a lot of ways to raise money, but buzz is not particularly easy to create. With a women's board, there would be people at dinner parties and at luncheons throughout the city talking about the Joffrey." Women's boards are a Chicago institution; they are not powerful in the civic and arts charitable scenes of New York and Los Angeles. At one time, they represented a social outlet for wives who were not considered powerful or prominent enough to hold regular board seats. But over the decades, Chicago's women's boards have morphed into fundraising dynamos.
Smith started by calling a few friends. Renee Crown, the wife of the financier Lester Crown, was first, Smith says, because "I thought maybe one of her daughters-in-law might be interested." But Crown herself said she wanted to get involved. "Renee doesn't mind getting her hands dirty, and that's what we needed: women who would take on projects and who would make those painful phone calls asking for money." Next Smith called Shirley Ryan, the wife of Patrick Ryan, the chief executive officer of the Aon Corporation, and then Bonnie Deutsch, a philanthropist. "People joined and then they asked their friends to join, and it just turned out to be a great group of strong women," says Smith. "We might look like the Chanel army when we meet, but we range from women who bring their babies all the way to women whose age I am not allowed to discuss."
Her original goal was to recruit 50 people. Today, the Joffrey Women's Board has 168 members. They are asked to pay annual dues of $200 to cover the cost of luncheon meetings; they are also "strongly encouraged," in the words of Smith, to become a member of the Joffrey Circle, for a donation of $1,000 a year. But unlike trustee members, who have an annual giving requirement of $15,000, the women's board does not require any other financial gifts from its members. Yet it has become the largest donor to the Joffrey, raising a net total of $1.9 million annually. "Some people may think, Oh, the ladies give the parties," says Smith, who is now the chairman emeritus of the women's board, "but we are quite a force." Teeuwissen agrees. "The women's board is a true powerhouse for the Joffrey," he says.
| Photography: Jack Mitchell Courtesy of the Joffrey Ballet  |
| Lillian Wellein in Pas des Déesses in the 1950s |
Much of the money is raised by the annual spring gala, hosted by the women's board. But the women's efforts don't stop there: the Family Night in December includes a dinner at The Chicago Club and a performance of The Nutcracker. Deborah Beitler, an active volunteer in Highland Park, oversees Destination Dance, an annual fundraising jaunt for women's board members to check out another town and another ballet company. "Recently, it was a trip to see the Miami Ballet, along with a party at a fabulous house that had been in Architectural Digest and the requisite shopping afternoon," says Smith. "Just a wonderful weekend in South Beach that helps the Joffrey."
For the 50th anniversary this year, the women's board took on a commemorative project. "We talked about paperweights and things like that," says the board member Kathleen Klaeser, the wife of the businessman Dennis Klaeser. "But we had all these years of fantastic photographs by Herbert Migdoll, who had officially recorded the Joffrey since the 1950s. So I suggested we do a book."
The result is The Joffrey Ballet: American Classic ($50), a 160-page photography book that will be available by the end of May exclusively through the Joffrey. "Going through the thousands of photographs was an intense experience," says Klaeser, who with fellow women's board member Kim White, the owner of the Libertyville bookstore Crocodile Pie and the wife of Miles White, the chief executive officer of Abbott Laboratories, oversaw the book's production. "Of course, photographs, like all art, are subjective and everyone had an opinion," Klaeser recalls. But eventually the final cuts were made; the result focuses on images taken by Migdoll, who is renowned for his ability to convey movement in dance photographs. The book also includes photos taken by Barbara Levy Kipper, a board member.
"We had some generous underwriting, and InnerWorkings, a print management company, donated most of its expenses," says Klaeser, "so we should be able to turn over all of the money generated by the sale of the book directly to the Joffrey."
–M. F. C.
Did you like what you read here? Subscribe to Chicago Magazine »
