Anver Joffrey

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American dancer and choreographer who held dance as his dream from the age of seven when he saw Astaire and Kelly movies. His first fledgling troupe consisted of six dancers, a station wagon and a U-Haul touring an endless string of one-nighters. In 1956 he began his first tour of 11 states with his dancers from New York and the Joffrey Ballet was born. He played in every state and many countries, with an accent on youth in repertory and dancers. None of his achievements came without fierce struggle. The company's residency at the Los Angeles Music Center, 1983-1990, ended in a financial debacle. Joffrey himself looked nothing like the sleek, art-deco dancers of his company, a small, rotund man whose sex-life was promiscuous in the gay underground. As a youth, he related that he had taken dance as therapy for asthma, instead of the truth, that it was in the hope of strengthening bowed legs. He did nonetheless suffer from asthma and died of a treatment for that ailment that caused a liver condition, on 3/25/1988, New York.