The company's first season was in 1956, when artistic director Gerald Arpino took six dancers on the road in a borrowed station wagon and U-Haul truck. (According to the Chicago Sun-Times, co-founder Robert Joffrey, who died in 1988, stayed home to oversee the school.)

The 2005-06 season will begin with a program, called Midsummer Night's Dream, that includes Frederick Ashton's The Dream, Jir‹ Kylišn's Return to a Strange Land, and Arpino's Celebration.

John Cranko's full-length Romeo and Juliet, set to Prokofiev's score, will comprise the winter program, and the company's own Nutcracker, choreographed by Joffrey and Arpino, will occupy its usual holiday spot.

The spring program, called Cool Vibrations, features Twyla Tharp's Deuce Coupe and Laura Dean's Sometimes It Snows in April (set to music by Prince), along with a world-premiere work by Donald Byrd.

Music for the entire season will be provided by the Chicago Sinfonietta, conducted by Joffrey music director Leslie B. Dunner.