"Apollo," by the Joffrey Ballet. Click photo for larger image. The Joffrey Ballet Where: Pittsburgh Dance Council at the Benedum Center, Downtown. When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Tickets: $22.50-$50.50; "Gods and Goddesses" after-party on Saturday at 121 Seventh St., $75 for performance and party or $40 for party only; www.pgharts.org or 412-456-6666.

"I dressed the stages, rosined the floor -- we did everything. There were six of us and we'd set the whole stage. I think that time was a pioneering time. I think it was discovering dance in America."

-- Gerald Arpino

CHICAGO -- At 79, Gerald Arpino is still discovering dance -- in its history, in a new generation of dancers that are the Arpino Apprentices, in the performances that he watches night after night.

He has spent 50 years, all with the Joffrey Ballet, watching dance grow on the roads that crisscross America. Along with Robert Joffrey, he built America's dance company, not only mile by mile, but step by step.

It all began on the West Coast and stretched across the country.

Born on Staten Island, New York, Arpino wanted to become a sailor when he headed west to Seattle. It wasn't long before he fell in love with a girl and fell into a dance class with her. There teacher Mary Ann Wells was producing a new breed of ballet dancer, opening her students' eyes to Pablo Picasso and Martha Graham. She would bring in Carmelita Maracci for Spanish classes. Ballroom dance was a must.

It was no accident that Joffrey wound up in the same class as Arpino. Their families had known each other for a long time, and Arpino looked them up when he came to town.

"Bob could have been a great diplomat," recalls Arpino while sitting in a side room of Roosevelt University's Auditorium Theater, the home of The Joffrey Ballet. "He had a way that you almost respected every one of his demands -- you know -- without realizing that you were giving in to him."

Joffrey was Arpino's acknowledged opposite. "I was outgoing, very enthusiastic," Arpino says with a geniality belying his frail appearance. "Bob was quiet, but he had a natural, intuitive sense of dance. I had to acquire it. I had to work hard."

	Gerald Arpino.

The pair headed to New York City, where they explored a dance landscape like no other -- taking classes at George Balanchine's burgeoning School of American Ballet, studying under modern dance pioneer May O'Donnell and sampling the variety of ethnic dances as well.

The Robert Joffrey Ballet Concert gave its first performance on May 29, 1954. Within two years, the first tour of the renamed Robert Joffrey's Theatre Dancers began with the now-famous station wagon, tugging a U-haul and carrying Arpino and five company members.

Joffrey would remain back in New York teaching to raise money. As it turned out, the financial road would always remain rocky, but the company pressed on with vital support from critics and audiences.

"I think socially we were changing the world in the '60s," says Arpino. "I felt that way when we were starting the Joffrey Ballet. Ballet had gotten so stagnant. We were going to make a new comment about dance in America."

Over the years, the name was shortened, but the repertoire expanded with a three-pronged attack. Arpino's "Trinity" (1969), once called a "choreographic hymn to counterculture flower power," was the first ballet to use rock music. The avid response by youth-oriented audiences prompted the company to follow with notable premieres to supply that heretofore unheard of demand. The company gave one of the earliest works by a young Twyla Tharp, whose "Deuce Coupe" to music by the Beach Boys created a sensation, along with trend-setting choreographers like Mark Morris, Jiri Kylian and Laura Dean.

At the same time, the Joffrey gave a new voice to singular historic works: Nijinsky's "Rite of Spring," Balanchine's "Cotillion" and Massine's "Les Presages," which is a part of the current 50th anniversary celebration. The ballets were meticulously and lovingly re-created, sometimes requiring intensive research to fill in the blanks. But these pieces of history emerged with full-blooded, exciting performances in the spirit with which they were created.

"[It was] like Diaghilev was doing in his earlier period with his company and that's why [they] focused so much on those works," says Joffrey associate artistic director Adam Sklute. "Diaghilev was combining all of these unusual and different art forms to make ballet more complete." To which Arpino jokingly retorted, "Bob thought he was the reincarnation of Diaghilev."

Joffrey and Arpino also brought the finest international choreographers to its repertoire, presenting substantial helpings of Britain's Frederick Ashton, Germany's John Cranko and Germany's Kurt Jooss.

The Pittsburgh program will mirror that singular artistic vision in the program set for the Pittsburgh Dance Council. Its rock ballet, "Billboards," set to music by Prince, will be represented by Laura Dean's "Sometimes It Snows In April," followed by Balanchine's "Apollo." Lastly, one of The Joffrey's signature reconstructions, Kurt Jooss' "The Green Table," still reflects our time with its powerful anti-war sentiment.

They reflect The Joffrey's versatility and ability of these dancers to tackle what is arguably the most extensive repertoire in the country. "There is no style in an all-style company," says Arpino. "The true beauty of The Joffrey is that it embraces the artist in so many various forms of the art."

He tops it off with an unquenchable spirit that connects to audiences around the world. "I'm so American," he says with an unabashed fervor. "I'm always waving the flag any way I can."

"Apollo," by the Joffrey Ballet.