West Side Story did, however, earn Robbins his second Tony Award for choreography. It is a chance to rediscover the brilliance, the wit and . This man, barefoot and wiry, wears a turtleneck and black tights cropped at the calf. 1, Jeremiah, was premiered. When Serge Koussevitzky, one of the several conductors who mentored Lenny, and himself a Jew, suggested he Anglicize his name to Leonard S. Burns, he replied, Ill do it as Bernstein or not at all. (Pronounced Bern-stine, with a long i.). Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. In 1964, he took on a floundering Funny Girl and devised a show that ran 1348 performances. Nobody.. February 26, 2020. A multi-faceted individual, his work ranged from classical ballet to contemporary musical theater, and he also occasionally directed films and television programs. They were having a real good time, obviously. One of the greats who made this impact . Fosse had he no reservations about drawing upon the facts of his own . As far as Im concerned, theres West Side Story and then there are musicals. This was the pinnacle of the Bernstein-Robbins enterprise. He performed in it when it was presented at the Metropolitan Opera as part of the Ballet Theatres 1944 season. He was awarded a fifth Tony Award for it. Jerry just breathed theater, says the composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who worked with both men. Jerome Robbins was an American theater producer and dance choreographer best known for his work in Broadway Theater and ballet/dance. His work is characterized by the intensity and compactness of its expression and its wide variety of mood whether it be rhapsodic, introspective, poignant, or hilarious. A letter of late 1943: I have written a musical double-take when the sailor sees Girl #2has that ever been done before? What three dancers did Fred Astaire dance with? Lennys mother, Jennie, doted and adored, while Jerrys mother, Lena, was impossible to please (a favorite gambit: if Jerry misbehaved, she would pretend to call the orphanage with a donationhim). At the age of 13, he teamed up with another young dancer, Charles Grass. In the early 1940s, when young Jerome Robbins was a dancer in a newly founded company, Ballet Theatre, he already had ambitions to be a choreographer, and he finally presented a scenario that. Images, Digital Colorization by Impact Digital. . Robbins died at the height of his creative powers. By Martha Swope/Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library. Both were artists in love with classicism, trained in European traditions yet bending them to their new-world will. I wanted to be safe, protected, assimilated. Once he began performing, his name changed program to program, from Robin Gerald to Gerald Robins to Jerry Robyns to Gerald Robin to Jerome Robbins. I will never, never work with Jerome Robbins again, as long as I livelong pause of silencefor a while. Gerald Freedman, Robbinss assistant director on West Side Story, remembers Bernstein saying this over dinner, after the show opened. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered on the Atlantic Ocean. Penn Badgley Loves His Wife Too Much to Do Sex Scenes in, I askedSera Gamble, the creator, Can I just do no more intimacy scenes? the former, Inside Thom Browne's Fantastical New York Fashion Week Show With Penn Badgley, Queen Latifah and Lil Nas X. Broadway, ballet, and Jerome Robbins. Here's how to get them. He then performed the same tasks for Gypsy (1959) and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). Lenny conducted, and his buoyant presence, that too was choreographic. Jerome Robbins. The photographs on this website depict choreography copyrighted by the individual choreographers. His work is characterized by the intensity and compactness of its expression and its wide variety of mood whether it be rhapsodic, introspective, poignant, or hilarious. His only visible ear, the right, is largeand as centrally positioned in the portrait as middle C. Is this a fin de sicle poet dressed for the theater? He preferred to describe his method as . His numerous awards and academic honors included the Handel Medallion of the City of New York (1976), the Kennedy Center Honors (1981), three Honorary Doctorates, an honorary membership in the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1985) and in 1988 he was awarded the National Medal of the Arts.Mr. Although he began as a modern dancer, his start on Broadway was as a chorus dancer before joining the corps de ballet of American Ballet Theatre in 1939, where he went on to dance principal roles in the works of Fokine, Tudor, Massine, Balanchine, Lichine, and de Mille. The first program includes students from the Trudl Zipper Dance Institute, who will dance choreography by Jerome Robbins to live performances of Debussy's music. The carpets mossy folds throw luxuriant shadows, and the musician upon them wears white tie and tails, a black overcoat caping his shoulders. Robbins had come to a place of peace about being a Jew. I remember touching it, he said, and that was it. He died at his home in New York on July 29, 1998. Sondheim wrote and Robbins staged an entirely new opening number, "Comedy Tonight", which explained to the audience what was to follow, and the show played successfully from then on. They planned to stage the conflict between rival Catholic and Jewish groups. Add the Latin-American thread, which came in around 1941, when he was in Key West, and he just went bananas.. What happened when Balanchine died? Shortly after Fancy Frees premiere, Robbins was already pushing the envelope, thinking about a ballet dance play in one scene, combining the forms of dance, music, & spoken word into one theater form. It didnt come to anything at Ballet Theatre, but when Oliver Smith suggested that the situation of Fancy Free might be retooled into a Broadway show, spontaneity and content merged and the result was On the Town. Thats exactly whats involved. Bernstein and Robbins admired and antagonized each other, exhilarated and wounded each other, loved and at times hated each other. Both these men were about energypositive, negative, generativeand while they racked up stunning achievements separately, they were elevated when joined. West Side Story created by Lenard Bernstein, Steven Sondheim, Arthur Laurents, and Jerome Robbins tell the story of Romeo and Juliet in 1950s New York. The secondary Privately, Bernstein called it a dreadful experience. The Robbins biographer Amanda Vaill suggests that Robbins may have become just too authoritarian for his On the Town family. The latter led to his creating the anthology show Jerome Robbins' Broadway in 1989 which recreated the most successful production numbers from his 50-plus year career. Felicia Bernstein didnt speak to him after that, or not much, and wouldnt have him in the apartment. We went crazy, Lenny recalled. For his own company, Ballets U.S.A. (1958 - 1962), he created N.Y. He won acclaim for highly innovative ballets structured within the traditional framework of classical dance movements. I began developing the theme right there in his presence., The one thing about Lennys music which was so tremendously important, Robbins said later, was that there always was a kinetic motorthere was a power in the rhythms of his work, or the change of rhythms in his work and the orchestrationwhich had a need for it to be demonstrated by dance., I remember all my collaborations with Jerry in terms of one tactile bodily feeling, Bernstein said in 1985, which is his hands on my shoulders, composing with his hands on my shoulders. Leonard Bernstein never looked more beautiful. From 1941 through 1944, Robbins was a soloist with the company, attracting notice for his performance as Hermes in Helen of Troy, the title role in Petrouchka, the Youth in Agnes de Mille's Three Virgins and a Devil, and Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet; he also came under the influence of the choreographers Michel Fokine, Antony Tudor, and George Balanchine. Jerry did not feel lovable and was deeply guarded. Robbins was first known for his skillful use of contemporary American themes in ballets and Broadway and Hollywood musicals. scheduled Dybbuks premiere for May 1974, expectations ran high. During this period, Robbins created Fancy Free, a ballet with a screwball-comedy plot about sailors on leave that combined classical ballet with 1940s social dancing. Key words: standing over him. In their relationship, Jerry was the leader, dominant, the overlordeveryone says thisand Lenny was flexible, with quick response time and an inexhaustible archive of musical forms from which to pull. At the end of that tunnel I could see light where the world opened up, waiting for me., Note the shared language of rapture. As a former Communist Party member, he named 10 communists in his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Jerome Robbins' more jazz-based work on such shows like West Side Storyalso seems to draw from the stylization and basic foundation that Cole set forththe best example of this being, fittingly, the song "Cool." However, she did not seriously pursue a career in the profession until she was a student . And despite his wit and charm after hours, Robbins at work used confrontation and cruelty to get his way. In 1949 Robbins left Ballet Theatre to join George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein's newly formed New York City Ballet as Associate Artistic Director. Finally I walk all the way up onstage and yell, Quiet on the gallery! I look up and theres Jerry and Lenny, side by side, looking over the rail at me. Left, Philippe Halsman/Magnum Photos; Right, United Artists/Photofest, Digital Colorization by Lee Ruelle. Why is Bob Fosse's work so influential? How many films did Fred Astaire star in between 1938-1968. The company performed to acclaim in the United States and Europe. Lenny had a really wonderful sense of theater, but he breathed music., Still, there were crucial differences. Rabinowitz was so not American. Regarding Jerry, Bernsteins view was simple: We have to cater to genius. Put them together in collaborationin masterpieces such as the joyous ballet Fancy Free, the breakaway musical On the Town, and the electrifying experiment West Side Storyand you had an ongoing theatrical Manhattan Project, work kinetically detonated, irreducibly true, and oh so American. The book and lyrics were written by a team that Robbins would work with again, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and the director was the Broadway legend George Abbott. Yet his torso twists in another direction, and his arms are held tightly behind his back, hidden as if handcuffed. A documentary about Robbins's life and work, Something to Dance About, featuring excerpts from his journals, archival performance and rehearsal footage, and interviews with Robbins and his colleagues, premiered on PBS in 2009 and won both an Emmy and a Peabody Award the same year. The production ran over a year off-Broadway and was transferred to Broadway for a short run in 1963, after which Robbins directed Anne Bancroft in a revival of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children. Jerome Robbins died on July 29, 1998 at the age of 79 after suffering a stroke, leaving behind a monumental legacy that continues to be performed and honored. He established and partially endowed the Jerome Robbins Film Archive of the Dance Collection of the New York City Public Library at Lincoln Center. Dybbuk Dybbuk Dybbuk, Robbins wrote to Bernstein in 1958. Does the Colossus mistrust the camera or himself? April 30, 2013. The plot, about Jews living in Russia near the beginning of the 20th century, allowed Robbins to return to his religious roots. I can feel him standing behind me saying, yes, now just about four more beats there . He received equal acclaim for his work as a director of musicals and plays for Broadway as a director of musicals, as well as a director of movies . Bernstein had married the sublime Felicia Montealegre Cohn, a Costa Ricanborn actress and musician, in 1951; he was now the father of Jamie and Alexander (Nina yet to come); and he had just signed on as music director of the New York Philharmonic. During this decade, the influence of Latin American music and dance enriched jazz dance as was seen in the landmark Broadway production of West Side Story, choreographed by Jerome Robbins . And the one thing that Jerry did not trust was his instinct. His infernal second-guessingan aesthetic integrity that had him tossing out thrilling ideas in search of even better, truer onescould get maddening, irrational. But this was one more thing that Lenny and Jerry had in commonbisexuality. The show, with music by Leonard Bernstein, marked the first collaboration between Robbins and Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the lyrics, as well as Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book. Nobody had Jerrys invention. August 14, 2014. Bernstein wrote a magnificent scorebrooding, gliding, gleamingly nocturnal. Ballet, tap and ballroom. Robbins re-teamed with Sondheim and Laurents, and the music was by Jule Styne. Two months later his Symphony No. Few chose to go home. The talented couple toured throughout Chicago theaters as "The Riff Brothers." I felt totally immersed in it and lost, she says, lost in the music. Dybbuk comes back into N.Y.C.B. He joined the company of Senya Gluck Sandor, a leading exponent of expressionistic modern dance; it was Sandor who recommended that he change his name to Robbins. At their best, they completed each other. West Side Story is a contemporary version of Romeo and Juliet, set on the Upper West Side. THE MUSIC MEN And when it came to being Jewish, Lenny was proud of his heritage. He also directed and co-choreographed (with Bob Fosse) Bells Are Ringing (1956), starring Judy Holliday. Robbins had romantic relationships with a number of people, including Montgomery Clift, Nora Kaye, Buzz Miller and Jess Gerstein. And Jerry would be standing over him and hed clutch Lennys shoulders as if he were a musical instrument. In the 1940s, their name was legally changed to Robbins. Among his numerous stage productions were On the Town, Peter Pan, High Button Shoes, The King and I, The Pajama Game, Bells Are Ringing, West Side Story, Gypsy, and Fiddler on the Roof. It was too exposing. When Bernstein told People magazine, The ballet is based on our experience in Jewishness, Robbins corrected him: It isnt.. Jerome Robbins received world renown as a choreographer of ballets created for the New York City Ballet, Ballets U.S.A., American Ballet Theatre, and other international companies. Like Jerome Robbins, whom he endeavored to emulate, he strove for unity of style within each separate work, shaped by the story and the characters in it. To promote authenticity, Robbins kept the cast members for the Jets and the Sharks separated from each other during rehearsals and continuously posted news stories about gang violence on the bulletin board . Who did the choreography for West Side Story 1961? Blend of musical theatre and ballet. This dual interest produced a staggering number of ballets and stagings of musical plays, notable for their diversity, brilliance, lyric beauty, and humor. Because Robbins was touring with Ballet Theatre, much of the collaboration on Fancy Frees score took place through the mail. Two years after that, he directed and choreographed Bells are Ringing (1956), followed by the historic, operatic, and balletic West Side Story (1957). All rights reserved. Among his outstanding works were The Guests (1949), Age of Anxiety (1951), The Cage (1951), The Pied Piper (1951), Afternoon of a Faun (1953), Fanfare (1953), and The Concert (1956), the latter the most hilarious of all ballets. Perry Silvey, the longtime technical director of the New York City Ballet, remembers running a rehearsal sometime in the late 80s. When they had shot all but three musical numbers, Robbins was fired for taking too long with shooting. [10] In 1948 he added another credit to his resume, becoming co-director as well as choreographer for Look Ma, I'm Dancin'! Three of his dance trademarks included turned-in knees, sideways shuffling, and rolled shoulders. The streak of hits continued with Gypsy (1959), starring Ethel Merman. The musical is based (loosely) on the life of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. "Tradition!" JEROME ROBBINS' BROADWAY features a selection of numbers from FIDDLER ON THE ROOF! At this time, most of Penns subjects were middle-aged and long-established, but not these two. I suddenly felt at the center of a universe I could control. For Jerry, whod been playing violin and piano from the age of three and who began taking dance classes in high school, art seemed like a tunnel to me. He received equal kudos for his work in commercial theater Broadway.