Jerome Robbins

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Robbins, Jerome [né Rabinowitz] (1918–98), choreographer and director. Born in New York, he studied ballet with Anthony Tudor and other famous dancers before dancing in several Broadway musicals in the late 1930s. It was only after he attained success as a choreographer and dancer with the Ballet Theatre that Robbins returned to the theatre to devise the dances for On the Town (1944), which had been inspired by his ballet Fancy Free. His “Mack Sennett Ballet” for High Button Shoes (1947) remains the comic masterpiece among all dances created for Broadway musical comedies. This was followed by his choreography for Look, Ma, I'm Dancin' (1948), Miss Liberty (1949), Call Me Madam (1950), and The King and I (1951). In 1954 he co‐directed The Pajama Game, then starting with Peter Pan (1954) Robbins served as director for all the shows he choreographed: Bells Are Ringing (1956), West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), and Fiddler on the Roof (1964), as well as the nonmusical Oh Dad, Poor Dad . . . (1962) and uncredited work on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962). If he was often the wittiest of choreographers, he was also brilliantly adept at creating the starkest of dance dramas, as witnessed by his work for West Side Story. Other examples of his great variety included the imaginatively stylized “Small House of Uncle Thomas” ballet in The King and I and the folkloristic Jewish dances in Fiddler on the Roof. His later years were devoted to major ballet companies, but he returned to the theatre when he restaged his past dances for the retrospective Jerome Robbins' Broadway (1989). Biography: Dance With Demons: The Life of Jerome Robbins, Greg Lawrence, 2001.

A major creative force on both the Broadway and ballet stages beginning in 1944, director/choreographer Jerome Robbins (born Rabinowitz 1918) extended the possibilities of musical theater and brought a contemporary American perspective to classical dance.

American director and choreographer Jerome Robbins was equally renowned for his work in musical theater and ballet and made auspicious debuts in both fields in 1944. On April 18, Ballet Theater (now American Ballet Theater) presented the world premiere of Fancy Free, which followed the exploits of three sailors on shore leave in New York. That ballet became the springboard for On the Town, a musical comedy which premiered eight months later and featured choreography by Robbins. Over the next 20 years, Robbins choreographed and/or directed 15 other musicals and "show doctored" five more. A partial list of his Broadway credits includes High Button Shoes (1947), The King and I (1951), Pajama Game (1954), Peter Pan (1954), Bells Are Ringing (1956), West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), and Fiddler on the Roof (1964).

During and after the years he was active on Broadway he also earned a reputation as the greatest classical choreographer born in the United States. Working mostly with the New York City Ballet, he choreographed 61 ballets through 1989. Among his finest were Interplay (1945), The Cage (1951), Afternoon of a Faun (1953), The Concert (1956), Dances at a Gathering (1969), The Goldberg Variations (1971), In G Major (1975), Other Dances (1976), The Four Seasons (1979), Glass Pieces (1983), and Ives, Songs (1988).

Robbins was born Jerome Rabinowitz in New York on October 11, 1918, to Russian Jewish parents who came to America to flee the pogroms. He grew up in Weehawken, New Jersey, and was in his late teens when he began studying at the Sandor-Sorel Dance Center in Brooklyn. He later took lessons in modern, Spanish, and Oriental dance.

Between 1937 and 1940 Robbins appeared in the chorus of four Broadway musicals and also danced at Camp Tamiment, a summer resort for adults where revues were staged by aspiring performers. It was there that he had his first opportunity to choreograph. In 1940 he joined the newly created Ballet Theater as a dancer and studied with the choreographers Antony Tudor and Eugene Loring. Ballet Theater had a particular penchant for Russian ballets - Robbins often said that he spent a good deal of time in "boots, bloomers and a peasant wig" - and Fancy Free was, in part, a reaction to that repertoire.

Successful Musicals and Ballets

The ballet - in which Robbins danced "the rumba" sailor - was set to a commissioned score by the relatively unknown Leonard Bernstein and was an instant masterpiece. It was not just the jazz inflections or familiar, everyday gestures incorporated into the choreography that made the piece special. A ballet portraying contemporary American characters behaving in contemporary American fashion was virtually unheard of at the time, and wartime audiences recognized the people onstage at once.

Robbins then took his choreographic talents to Broadway with similar success. On the Town marked the first time that dance had been so fully integrated into a Broadway show, prompting one critic to suggest that it be called "a ballet comedy instead of a musical comedy."

For the next few years Robbins divided his time between Broadway and ballet. His choreography was singled out as the high point of Billion Dollar Baby (1946); High Button Shoes (1947); Look Ma, I'm Dancin' (1948), which he co-directed with George Abbott; Miss Liberty (1949); and Call Me Madam (1950). High Button Shoes earned him his first Tony award.

In 1949 George Balanchine invited Robbins to join the New York City Ballet as dancer, choreographer, and associate artistic director. During the next decade he created ten ballets for the company, and his moody, evocative dances were a wonderful contrast to Balanchine's plotless neoclassicism.

In 1951 Robbins choreographed Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I, the most sophisticated Broadway show of which he had thus far been a part. But the show that would forever cement his reputation as one of the most important figures in the history of Broadway was West Side Story, which opened in 1957 and continued to have an impact on the course of musical theater into the 1990s. This modern, updated Romeo and Juliet saga was the first musical conceived, choreographed, and directed by one man. It marked the culmination of many innovations that originally appeared in On the Town and earned Robbins his second Tony award for choreography.

Innovations in All His Work

In 1959 Robbins directed and choreographed Gypsy, another theatrical landmark. That same year he left City Ballet to devote his energies to his own company, Ballets: USA, which was formed in 1958 and disbanded in 1961. Among the works that came out of Ballets: USA was Moves (1959), a startling experiment in that it is performed without music. It was added to the repertory of City Ballet.

Robbins was back on Broadway with two shows in 1964. He was production supervisor on Funny Girl and director and choreographer of Fiddler on the Roof. Fiddler won nine Tony awards, with Robbins winning for both direction and choreography. It was Robbins who saw the universality in this simple tale about a milkman wrestling with his religious beliefs. He envisioned a work that depicted the dissolution of a community, which inspired lyricist Sheldon Harnick and composer Jerry Bock to write "Tradition," the song that informs the entire musical.

Two years after Fiddler, Robbins established the American Theater Laboratory, an experimental workshop designed to explore theater forms involving dance, song, and speech. It lasted through 1968, but none of the work done by the group developed into a project that was seen by the public. Among those to participate was Robert Wilson, who later became known for his avant-garde creations. Robbins won a Best Director Oscar for his work on the film version of West Side Story (1961) and also received a special Academy Award for his choreography. His work on the telecast of Peter Pan (1955) earned him an Emmy.

In 1969 Robbins returned to City Ballet as one of the company's ballet masters. The first work he choreographed was the hour-long Dances at a Gathering, which is set to various Chopin piano pieces and is regarded by many as his finest ballet. Ten dancers perform in various combinations - solos, duets, trios, quartets, and onward - expressing a range of moods and emotions, all the while suggesting a sense of community. The variety of the choreography is remarkable, and one critic called the piece "a celebration of dance."

Robbins was particularly productive during the 1970s, during which time he choreographed more than 20 pieces for City Ballet, including The Goldberg Variations (1971), a 90-minute exploration of the famous Bach score, and Watermill (1972), which borrows freely from Eastern theater techniques and elevates stillness to an art form. In 1976, for a non-City Ballet gala, he choreographed Other Dances - another Chopin ballet - for Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova. After Baryshnikov joined City Ballet for a year beginning in 1979, Robbins went on to choreograph two more works for him: Opus 19, "The Dreamer," and The Four Seasons, in which Baryshnikov danced the fall section.

In the 1980s Robbins continued to expand his vision. Robbins was the recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor in 1981. In 1983 he was named co-ballet master-in-chief of City Ballet (with Peter Martins), shortly before Balanchine's death. Robbins' ballet Ives, Songs premiered several months before his 70th birthday in 1988 and poignantly depicted a man looking back at his life. That same year Robbins literally delved into his past: He went to work recreating and reconstructing some of the highlights from his 20 years in musical theater for archival purposes and wound up creating a new show, Jerome Robbins' Broadway. The musical opened in February 1989, marked Robbins' return to Broadway after a 25-year absence, and earned him his fifth Tony award.

Robbins retired from City Ballet in 1990, but continued his creative pursuits. In 1994 he premiered A Suite of Dances, a solo work performed by Mikhail Baryshnikov set to music from Bach's unaccompanied suites. That same year the School of American Ballet premiered his 2 + 3 Inventions, another dance set to the music of Bach. The next January (1995) a major work by Robbins, Brandenburg, was preformed by the City Ballet. Brandenburg was described by critic Terry Teachout as the "missing link in Robbins's output."

Throughout his career Robbins combined theatrical savvy with an unerring sense of movement to create potent, moving panoramas. The diversity of his work is astonishing, but if there is one thread linking much of his art, it is his repeated exploration of community. His ballets have been danced by many of the world's major companies, including American Ballet Theater, Dance Theater of Harlem, Joffrey Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, England's Royal Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, San Francisco Ballet, and Australian Ballet.

Further Reading

His work is examined in Repertory in Review (1977) by Nancy Reynolds; Broadway Musicals (1979) by Martin Gottfried; Broadway Song & Story (1985), edited by Otis. L. Guernsey, Jr.; and "Robbin's 'Fancy"' by Tobi Tobias, which appeared in Dance Magazine in January 1980. A critical review of his choreography is provided by Terry Teachout in Dance Magazine (May 1997).

Robbins, Jerome (orig. Jerome Rabinowitz;b New York, 11 Oct. 1918, d 29 July 1998). US dancer, choreographer, and director, considered by many to be the greatest American-born classical choreographer. He studied with Loring, Tudor, and others, also Spanish dance with Helene Veola, Oriental dance with Nimura, and modern dance with Alice Bentley and his sister Sonya Robbins. He also studied acting with Elia Kazan, making his debut as an actor in 1937 and as a dancer at the Dance Center of Felia Sorel and Gluck-Sandor. Between 1938 and 1940 he danced in Broadway musicals and in 1940 joined Ballet Theatre (later American Ballet Theatre), becoming soloist (1941-4). He created roles in several ballets including Fokine's Bluebeard (1941), Lichine's Helen of Troy (1942), and Tudor's Romeo and Juliet (1943). His first major choreographic work (for Ballet Theatre) was the phenomenally successful Fancy Free (mus. Bernstein, 1944) about three impudent sailors on shore leave which, with Bernstein, he adapted into the musical On the Town (1944). This work forged the style which was to characterize much of his most popular work, a fusion of classical and modern dance combined with jazz and vernacular moves, often in the creation of sharp and witty contemporary characters. It was followed by Interplay (mus. Gould, 1945) and Facsimile (mus. Bernstein, 1946), both for Ballet Theatre, and the musicals Billion Dollar Baby (1946), High Button Shoes (1947), and Look Ma I'm Dancing (1948). In 1949 he joined New York City Ballet and as associate director (until 1959) created nine works for the company including The Age of Anxiety (mus. Bernstein, 1950), The Cage (mus. Stravinsky, 1951), Afternoon of a Faun (mus. Debussy, 1953), and The Concert (mus. Chopin, 1956). His version of Faun is a poetic but cynical study of the ballet world as two dancers reveal how much more attracted they are by their images in the mirror than by each other. The Concert, one of the first of several ballets he made to Chopin's music, is a comic masterpiece which engages with the surreal fantasies of a group of people as they listen to the music and also depicts a hapless ensemble of female dancers who cannot get the hang of dancing in unison. Robbins himself danced infrequently with New York City Ballet, though he did make memorable appearances in the title roles of Balanchine's Prodigal Son and Tyl Ulenspiegel (a role he created). He continued to choreograph for musicals, including Peter Pan (1954), which he also adapted and directed, West Side Story (1957, film version 1961), which he also conceived and directed, and Gypsy (1959). In 1958 he formed his own company, Ballets: USA, for the Spoleto Festival; for it he choreographed New York Export: Opus Jazz (mus. R. Prince) and Moves (no mus., 1959). The company was disbanded and then re-formed for the 1961 Spoleto Festival to perform Events (mus. R. Prince).

During the 1960s he choreographed Funny Girl (1964) and Fiddler on the Roof (1964) as well as directing various plays including Brecht's Mother Courage. In 1965 he choreographed Stravinsky's Les Noces for ABT and in 1969 returned to NYCB as ballet master, becoming ballet master in chief (with Peter Martins) in 1983 after Balanchine's death. He choreographed many more works for the company including Dances at a Gathering (mus. Chopin, 1969), The Goldberg Variations (mus. Bach, 1971), Watermill (mus. Teiji Ito, 1972), Requiem Canticles (mus. Strafinsky, 1972), Opus 19: The Dreamer (mus. Prokofiev, 1979), Glass Pieces (mus. Glass, 1983), and Ives Songs (mus. Ives, 1988). Robbins's work became increasingly less reliant on narrative but embraced a wide range of styles and moods, from the tenderly romantic Dances at a Gathering, in which ten young dancers unite in a mood of charmed transcendence, to the brilliant deconstruction of classical technique in Goldberg Variations; the use of Eastern stillness in Watermill, in which an older man (orig. Edward Villella) looks back over his past, and the luminous structural clarity of Glass Pieces. Together with the Balanchine œuvre these works defined the style of NYCB for many years, and Robbins was reluctant to allow other companies to perform his work. NYCB staged a Robbins Festival in 1990, after which he retired. His many awards included the Handel Medallion of the City of New York (1976). After his death, his personal dance archive was donated to the Dance Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which was renamed in his honour.

Other works include Summer Day (pas de deux, mus. Prokofiev, Ballet Theatre, New York, 1947), The Guests (mus. Blitzstein, NYCB, New York, 1949), The Pied Piper (mus. Copland, NYCB, New York, 1951), In the Night (mus. Chopin, NYCB, New York, 1970), Firebird (with Balanchine, mus. Stravinsky, NYCB, New York, 1970), Dumbarton Oaks (mus. Stravinsky, NYCB, New York, 1972), Pulcinella (with Balanchine, mus. Stravinsky, NYCB, New York, 1972), Requiem Canticles (mus. Stravinsky, NYCB, New York, 1972), Dybbuk (later called The Dybbuk Variations and, after 1980, Suite of Dances; mus. Bernstein, NYCB, New York, 1974), Concerto in G (later titled In G major; mus. Ravel, NYCB, New York, 1975), Other Dances (mus. Chopin, Gala for the Library of Performing Arts, New York, 1976), The Four Seasons (mus. Verdi, NYCB, New York, 1979), Piano Pieces (mus. Tchaikovsky, NYCB, New York, 1981), Allegro con grazia (mus. Tchaikovsky, NYCB, New York, 1981), Gershwin Concerto (mus. Gershwin, NYCB, New York, 1982), I'm Old Fashioned (mus. Gould after Kern, NYCB, New York 1983), Antique Epigraphs (mus. Debussy, NYCB, New York, 1984), Brahms/Handel (with Twyla Tharp; mus. Brahms, NYCB, New York, 1984), In Memory of … (mus. Berg, NYCB, New York, 1985), and West Side Story Suite (dances from the 1957 musical, mus. Bernstein, NYCB, 1995).

(1918- ), choreographer and dancer. Robbins is widely considered to be the greatest American choreographer. Born Jerome Rabinowitz in New York and raised in New Jersey, he began his career acting in Yiddish theater. He joined Ballet Theatre when it was founded in 1940, quickly becoming celebrated as an interpreter of great character roles, especially Petrouchka in Fokine's ballet of that name.

The turning point in his life came in 1944 when he conceived the idea for the ballet Fancy Free and, with Leonard Bernstein, brought it to fruition with Ballet Theatre on the Metropolitan Opera House stage. It was the greatest popular and critical success in American ballet up to that time. Depicting three sailors on shore leave who meet up with two girls on a bittersweet summer evening in New York City, the ballet was vernacular in style (the women wore high heels rather than pointe shoes; the men, sailor suits rather than tights). It drew on popular dance forms of the 1940s, such as the Lindy and the Samba, and touched a deep vein of American optimism, wistfulness, and naïveté. These were to become Robbins's hallmarks as a choreographer, as he interwove classical traditions with a contemporary sensibility.

The transformation of Fancy Free into a musical--On the Town--and ultimately a movie launched the varied nature of Robbins's career, as he moved between the theater, an occasional film, and ballet. In the theater, an extraordinary number of hits are attached to his name as choreographer and director, among them The King and I (1951), Peter Pan (1954), Bells Are Ringing (1956), West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), and Fiddler on the Roof (1964), an exploration of his Russian-Jewish roots. The culmination of this side of his talent was seen with the production, in 1989, of Jerome Robbins' Broadway, a compilation of highlights from eleven of his shows. As a theater man, Robbins stayed true to his roots as a dancer, always presenting the image of the dancer as the highest ideal and the embodiment of humanistic values.

In 1953 during the red scare, Robbins experienced profound difficulties with the House Un-American Activities Committee. When called to answer questions about his membership, from 1943 to 1947, in the Communist party, he implicated eight others as party members.

Associated first with Ballet Theatre as a dancer and choreographer, Robbins later worked in that double capacity with New York City Ballet (nycb), where he became a legendary interpreter of the title role in Prodigal Son. He later had his own company, Ballets U.S.A., from 1958 to 1961. In 1964 he returned to work again with nycb, where his career as a choreographer was conducted alongside, and inevitably to some degree in the shadow of, the giant of twentieth-century ballet George Balanchine. Robbins recognized Balanchine's preeminence and said he chose to work with nycb in order to be close to his genius. Certainly dance critics rank Robbins second only to Balanchine overall, but as the finest American-born classical choreographer. Following Balanchine's death in 1983, Robbins served with Peter Martins as nycb's co-ballet master in chief and was the subject of a two-week-long festival devoted to his ballets in the spring of 1990.

Robbins created ballets in many styles and atmospheres. Some, such as Interplay (1945), Fanfare (1953), Mother Goose (1975), and his comic triumph The Concert (1956), are light and effervescent. But he is also known for works that are probing, dark, preoccupied with contemporary themes such as neurosis and alienation. Among the stand-out works in this mode were Age of Anxiety (1950), The Cage (1951), and N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz (1958). Robbins has perhaps been most acclaimed for his masterpieces of lyrical dance theater, among them Afternoon of a Faun (1953), In the Night (1970), Other Dances (1976), and especially the landmark Dances at a Gathering (1969), whose impact was as explosive and transforming as Fancy Free.

Robbins has always been open to experiment within the classical framework. Notable among these works are The Goldberg Variations (1971), the Noh-inspired Watermill (1972), encounters with Philip Glass (Glass Pieces, 1983) and Steve Reich (Eight Lines, 1985), and the films of Fred Astaire (I'm Old-Fashioned, 1983). After Balanchine's death, Robbins produced a series of elegiac ballets expressive of mourning and loss: In Memory of ... (1985), for Suzanne Farrell; Quiet City (1986), widely seen as a tribute to Joseph Duell, an nycb dancer who committed suicide that year at age twenty-nine; and Ives, Songs (1988), a leave-taking to youth and spring. Robbins left nycb in 1990 to embark upon new projects.

Author:

Anita Finkel

See also Dance; Musical Theater.

• Born: Oct 11, 1918 in Weehawken, New Jersey
• Died: Jul 29, 1998 in New York City, New York
• Occupation: Actor
• Active: '40s-'70s, '90s-2000s
• Major Genres: Musical, Music
• Career Highlights: Fiddler on the Roof, The King and I, On the Town
• First Major Screen Credit: On the Town (1949)

Biography

One of Broadway and Hollywood's greatest choreographers, Jerome Robbins helped change the face of modern dance with his breathtaking ballets and spectacular stage productions.

Born Jerome Rabinowitz in Weehawken, NJ, his passion for dance began after watching his older sister, Sonya, dance. As a young man, Robbins dropped out of college to study dance full-time, and he became a professional hoofer in 1937. After working three years in various Broadway chorus lines, Robbins joined the newly formed Ballet Theater (later known as the American Ballet Theater); at that time, he was strictly a background dancer and only occasionally obtained small roles in classical ballet. As a choreographer, Robbins collaborated with composer Leonard Bernstein to create a more modern ballet sequence about a trio of sailors on leave in New York. The dance, "Fancy Free," was expanded into a full-length show by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, and retitled On the Town. Making its Broadway debut in 1944, the show's subsequent success led Robbins to an exciting second career as a stage choreographer. Though he continued to perform classical ballet until his retirement in 1952 at age 34, Robbins as a choreographer freely combined classical ballet with modern dance and jazz techniques to create a whole new way of interpreting dance that would earn him three Tony awards for High Button Shoes, West Side Story, and Fiddler on the Roof.

In addition to choreographing for other directors, Robbins also directed a number of distinguished Broadway productions; his direction of Fiddler on the Roof and the variety revue Jerome Robbins' Broadway earned him two more Tonys. Interestingly, he made his directorial debut not on-stage, but in the 1954 television adaptation of Peter Pan, starring Mary Martin. In film he choreographed The King and I (1956) and West Side Story (1961). He also co-directed the latter with Robert Wise and earned an Oscar for his efforts. Some of his stage choreography has been used in filmed versions of such productions as Gypsy (1963) and Fiddler on the Roof (1971). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note Buy this Movie	Gypsy Buy this Movie	Fiddler on the Roof Buy this Movie	West Side Story Buy this Movie
The King and I Buy this Movie	On the Town Buy this Movie

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