CHICAGO (AP) – The Joffrey Ballet has traveled a long way from its beginning 50 years ago as a six-member company that toured the country in a station wagon pulling a trailer, with the dancers unloading the equipment, ironing the costumes and setting the lights.

Robert Joffrey stayed behind in New York City, teaching ballet to pay the dancers’ salaries, while co-founder Gerald Arpino traveled and danced with the troupe.

Joffrey died in 1988 and financial problems prompted the company in 1995 to move from its New York base to Chicago.

Yet the Joffrey – now under the artistic leadership of Arpino – is still vibrant and unique, celebrating its golden anniversary with two seasons of works that mark the company’s reputation for commissioning groundbreaking young choreographers, performing socially relevant pieces, using nontraditional pop music and reconstructing “lost” ballets of the early 20th century.

A stop by its 19th-floor studios in downtown Chicago finds a rehearsal getting underway for the joyous tarantella in the company’s opulent production of “Romeo and Juliet.” Next door, a man and woman work on complicated lifts for a new piece set to classic Motown songs being readied for the spring repertory season.

In the wardrobe department, costumers repair intricate, bejeweled dresses for “Romeo and Juliet” while beginning to process outfits for this fall’s production of Sir Frederick Ashton’s “Cinderella.” Joffrey will be the first American company to perform the work, fulfilling a longtime dream of Robert Joffrey’s.

And less than two blocks away, a skyscraper is being built that will bear the name Joffrey Tower when the company takes possession of its 45,000 square feet in December 2007.

“I think Bob would be extremely happy to see what’s happening with the company’s development, how it’s grown and has a city that is truly the home of the Joffrey. That’s what he always wanted,” the 78-year-old Arpino said in a recent interview.

Joffrey was formed in 1956 “to be an American company that invested in American choreographers and dancers.

It reflected what could be done in this great country of ours,” Arpino said.

Arpino is dressed casually in gray pants and a gray shirt; later he will sit backward on a chair in the company’s largest studio, watching much of the cast rehearse the athletic, chaotic scene in which Romeo kills Tybalt.

“Deuce Coupe” used the music of The Beach Boys, incorporated modern and social dances, and was performed while live graffiti artists painted the backdrop on the stage – a perfect example of the way the Joffrey expanded the notions of ballet, said Charles Reinhart, director of the American Dance Festival.

“They carved a niche for themselves. Right from the beginning, they were much more on the cutting edge. But at the same time they were concerned with saving history and looking back to the cutting edge of the past – the Diaghilev years, for example,” Reinhart said.

“Look at what they have done in term of versatility and choices. Their works have added an incredible new excitement that I don’t think any other ballet company I know of has ever done.”

Yet despite the applause from the dance community, the company struggled after Joffrey’s death.

Arpino resigned in 1990 following a board dispute. Financial problems remained even when he returned, as the Joffrey scrambled to find funding and an audience in the shadow of the New York City Ballet, ABT and all the other cultural institutions in New York.

The decision to relocate to Chicago in 1995 came after Joffrey supporters looked at several large cities that lacked a major ballet company. For the dancers, it was a nerve-racking time as they mulled whether to make the transition to Chicago – and wondered what the future here would hold.

“A lot of the dancers were a little hesitant, one because relocating is hard to do, but also because we weren’t sure it would work, if it would work having the Joffrey here,” said Suzanne Lopez, who joined the company in 1991.

Like a number of other Joffrey dancers, Lopez kept her New York apartment for the first year after the company’s move. But now she happily lives in Chicago with her husband and is dancing Juliet in several performances this month after a short break during which she gave birth to her first child.

“I’m so glad I’m able to be a part of this 50th anniversary on so many levels,” Lopez said. “Yes, there was all that uncertainty. And now part of it is proving that, ‘hey we’re still here, we made it through all of that.”‘

Joffrey has always toured extensively, never having lost its station wagon roots, and that hasn’t changed with the move to Chicago. The company performed “The Nutcracker” in Fayetteville, Ark., and Detroit last December; “Romeo and Juliet” will be performed in Amarillo, Texas, in March.

Still, Arpino considers Chicago his home now. He said he rarely returns to New York, and he especially loves the variety of Chicago architecture he sees from his office window – from the Hancock Center to the gothic Tribune Tower.

Arpino believes the new Joffrey Tower will give it a visibility and stability to help keep the company fresh and vital in the ensuing decades. And in a sign that the Joffrey has been embraced by Chicago’s elite, Mayor Richard Daley’s brother – William Daley – is now the co-chair of the company’s board of directors.

“I think Chicago is truly a great American city,” Arpino said, “and it reflects a lot of how the Joffrey is as a company. It’s always experimenting, it’s always building, and the standards always keep going up, up.

“We’re really anchored here. And that’s the way it should be, because every great city has a great ballet company.”

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On the Net:

Joffrey Ballet: www.joffrey.com

AP-ES-02-21-06 1434EST