Jerome Robbins

"Essentially what i care about is working, that's what i feel my job is" - Jerome Robbins

Jerome Robbins was born to Russian Jewish immigrants Harry and Lena (Rips) Rabinowitz on October 11th 1918 in New York City. His birth name was Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz but he changed it (along with the rest of his family). Robbins went on to become a dancer and a massively celebrated choreographer, His debut number was called “Fancy Free” in 1944 and then went on to become the stage musical “On the Town”. His most famous works include “The King and I”, “Gypsy”, “Fiddler on the Roof” and of course “West Side Story”. These were all created before he settled on creating ballets. He also won an Oscar for his input to the film adaptation of “West Side Story2. Robbins then sadly passed away in 1988 aged 79 after suffering a stroke. He was first known for his use of modern, American themes in ballets and Broadway and Hollywood musicals. He created over 70 ballets ad musicals in his life.

Background And Early Career

His family moved from New York to Weehawken and New Jersey before changing their names. From a young age Robbins danced and trained with his sister’s modern dance teachers, however, his intentions at the time where to major in chemistry and so he enrolled at the New York University. A year into his course he was forced to drop out due to economic issues surrounding his father’s business during the great depression (the Wall Street Crash in October 1929). In 1936 he went on to embark in his career as a dancer. He studied many different styles of dance and joined the experimental group Gluck Sandor and also appeared in many musicals with the chorus. He then went on to join the Ballet Theatre (known today as the American Ballet Theatre) in 1940. This led to him starting to dance important roles such as “Petroushka” and it was around this time that he and his parents changed their name to Robbins. Following this, Robbins created his very first successful ballet alongside Leonard Bernstein, a new composer who created the musical score. The ballet debuted April 22, 1944, receiving 22 curtain calls. “Fancy Free” then turned into stage musical On the Town by the end of that year, this was his first musical. In December 1945 the musical “Billion Dollar Baby” took to the Alvin Theatre. Although Robbins did not create the musical and it was not received well with its audience, his choreography was widely praised. The show became known for an event that happened in rehearsals rather than its performance; Robbins was ranting at the dancers for getting his choreography wrong and didn’t realise how close he was to the edge of the stage and fell backwards into the orchestra pit. The same year he created “Interplay”. Robbins was then to switch between creating both ballets and musicals.In 1948 Robbins wrote to George Balanchine after watching the New York Ballet (NYB) perform Balanchine’s “Symphony in C.” as he was wishing to join the company. Robbins was invited to join the company as a dancer and a choreographer but by the following year he was working alongside Balanchine as the associate director. Robbins began to find refuge in the world of ballet he had much more freedom within the classical technique and a much less stressful working environment. He created many big ballets for the NYB, the first being “The Cage” in 1951.

For Broadway Robbins created many musicals and choreographed for many more. In 1954 he directed, adapted and choreographed the stage version of “Peter Pan”. The following year Robbins won an Emmy Award for the television adaptation. I think you would agree when I say that Robbins made a huge success with the musical “West Side Story” which was created in 1957 and was very much a Romeo and Juliet love story set in on the streets of New York City. Robbins collaborated with Bernstein to create music, Stephen Sondheim to create lyrics and Oliver Smith to create the set for the show. He won a Tony Award for best choreography in 1958 and also won an Academy award in 1961 for the film adaptation. The musical shows the dark side of the streets and highlights the rival gangs’ and the grimy lives they lead. The musical was seen as a huge feat in American musical history as it created a tense atmosphere with a dark setting through violent dance routines. From 1958 onwards Robbins focused on the ballet company he had formed (Ballet U.S.A) and worked with the company the American Theatre Laboratory before returning to work with the NYCB in 1969. He continued to create ballets and musicals and his last one being “Brandenburg” which premiered a year before his death (1997).

Influence today

Robbins has made a huge impact upon commercial today. He was known for using massive amounts of characterisation and technique. He could make a high kick to the side look angry or sad, The most obvious influence we can see is in the new Macklemore music video, “Downtown” ft Ryan Lewis (2015). We can see that it has clearly been based on the “West Side Story” narrative as we can see two rival gang coming together in the video. As also see elements of the same fashion used in the video, for example the leather gloves worn by the lead singer. There is also, of course, dancing used in the video, the use of clicking the fingers together is shown in this video and is also used in the song “Cool”, this shows both rhythm and also rivalry.

This video can be seen on YouTube and below