Jerome Robbins

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Jerome Robbins
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Jerome Robbins 1918-1998

• Original surname Rabinowitz
• Credited as a world renown choreographer of
  Ballet and Broadway dance.
• He has created work for the NYCB, Ballet U.S.A.,
  ABT, and other international companies. 
• Robbins is also know for his work as a director
  of musicals and plays for Broadway as well as a
  director of movies and television programs. 

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• Robbins was born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz.
• First lived in the lower east side of Manhattan.
• In the early 1920s the Rabinowitz family moved
  to Weehawken, New Jersey.
• His father and uncle opened the Comfort Corset
  Company, a unique venture for the family, which
  had many show business connections, including
  vaudeville performers and theater owners.

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Biographical Information

• Robbins was the son Russian-Jewish immigrants.
• He studied chemistry for one year at New York
  University before embarking on a career as a
  dancer in 1936.

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Early Dancing Career

• He began with the Ballet Theatre where he danced
  with special distinction the role of Petrouchka.
• He also played character roles in the works of
  Fokine, Tudor, Massine, Lichine, and de Mille.
• His first experience with Choreography occurred
  during Fancy Free (1944).  This ballet was
  followed by Interplay (1945) and Facsimile
  (1946), all of which were performed by Ballet
  Theatre. 
• Following his ballet career he embarked on a
  successful career as a choreographer and later as
  a director of Broadway musicals and plays. 

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Choreography

• In 1944 Robbins choreographed his first,
  spectacularly successful ballet, Fancy Free, with
  a musical score by the young composer Leonard
  Bernstein. This ballet, featuring three American
  sailors on shore leave in New York City during
  World War II, displayed Robbins' acute sense of
  theatre and his ability to capture the essence of
  contemporary American dance using the vocabulary
  of classical ballet. Later that year Robbins and
  Bernstein, in collaboration with the lyricists
  Betty Comden and Adolph Green, expanded Fancy
  Free into a successful Broadway musical called On
  the Town.

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Broadway Credits

• Robbins first musical, On The Town (1945), was
  followed by Billion Dollar Baby (1946), High
  Button Shoes (1947), Look, Ma, Im Dancing (1948,
  co-directed with George Abbott), Miss Liberty
  (1949), Call Me Madam (1950), and the ballet
  Small House of Uncle Thomas in The King and I
  (1951). 
• His work continued with Twos Company (1952),
  Pajama Game (1954, co-directed with Mr. Abbott),
  and Peter Pan (1954), which he directed and
  choreographed.  In the same year, he also
  directed the opera The Tender Land by Aaron
  Copland. 
• Two years after that, he directed and
  choreographed Bells Are Ringing (1956), followed
  by the historic West Side Story (1957), Gypsy
  (1959), and Fiddler on the Roof (1964).  In 1988,
  he staged Jerome Robbinss Broadway.

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• During this period in his life Robbins spent
  equal time working on Ballet and Broadway.
• Since 1958 Robbins had worked with the ballet
  company he had founded, Ballets U.S.A., which
  toured sporadically until 1961. In 1965 Robbins
  resumed creating ballets with his acclaimed Les
  Noces.
• For the next three years he worked on an
  experimental theatre project, the American
  Theatre Laboratory, but in 1969 he returned to
  NYCB.
• He was a resident choreographer and a ballet
  master there until 1983, when he and Peter
  Martins became ballet masters in chief (co
  directors) of the company shortly before
  Balanchine's death.
• Robbins resigned as co director of NYCB in 1990,
  though he continued to choreograph for the
  company. His last work, Brandenburg, premiered
  there in 1997. Many of his later ballets are more
  classical in style and more abstract in subject
  matter than his earlier works.

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• In 1949, he joined New York City Ballet as
  Associate Artistic Director. 
• Among his outstanding works for the Company
• The Cage (1951)
• Afternoon of a Faun (1953)
• The Four Seasons (1979)
• Antique Epigraphs (1984)
• Brahms/Handel (1984, with Twyla Tharp)
• Ives, Songs (1988), 2 3 Part Inventions (1994)
• West Side Story Suite (1995)
•   For American Ballet Theatres 25th anniversary
  in 1965, he staged Stravinskys dance cantata,
  Les Noces, a work of shattering and immense
  impact.

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Impact on Dance Today

• During this extraordinary career he served on
• The National Council on the Arts from 1974 to
  1980
• The New York State Council on the Arts/Dance
  Panel from 1973 to 1988. 

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• He established and partially endowed the Jerome
  Robbins Film Archive of the Dance Collection of
  the New York City Public Library at Lincoln
  Center. 
• Awards received
• Handel Medallion of the City of New York (1976)
• the Kennedy Center Honors (1981)
• three Honorary Doctorates
• an honorary membership in the American Academy
• Institute of Arts and Letters (1985)
• National Medal of the Arts (1988)

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• In 1958 Robbins formed a charitable organization
  bearing his name, the Jerome Robbins Foundation.
  Originally intended to fund dance and theatre
  projects, the foundation also provided financial
  support to projects combating the effects of the
  AIDS crisis. In accordance with Robbins' earlier
  wishes, in 2003 the foundation awarded the first
  Jerome Robbins Prizes in recognition of
  excellence in dance.