The Joffrey Ballet in Chicago has been awarded a $500,000 challenge grant from the Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation for an endowment to help create and produce full-length story ballets, officials of the Joffrey announced Monday. The new endowment, to be called the Rudolf Nureyev Fund at the Joffrey Ballet, is among the foundation’s biggest grants to a single cultural institution. The challenge is now for the Joffrey Ballet to raise an additional $1 million for the fund.
“The board of directors of the Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation believes that the Joffrey Ballet has established a solid foundation on which to develop into a premiere ballet company that can uniquely represent itself and Chicago, nationally and internationally,†Barry L. Weinstein, the president of the Nureyev foundation’s board, said in a statement.
The foundation has given over $4,000,000 in grants to benefit dance in this country. The Joffrey Ballet has benefited in the past: gifts allowed it to put on a 1997 revival of Nijinsky’s â€L’Apres-midi d’un Faune,â€Â in honor of Rudolf Nureyev, and supported the company’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 2005-2006.
