Jerome Robbins

Jerome Robbins 1918-98, American choreographer and dancer, b. New York City as Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz. Robbins began his career dancing in musicals (1937). In 1940 he joined the Ballet Theatre and in 1948 became associate artistic director of the New York City Ballet . The first ballet he choreographed, Fancy Free (1944), was expanded into the musical On the Town. Robbins gained distinction as the exuberantly innovative choreographer of such Broadway musicals as High Button Shoes (1947) and The King and I (1951). Ultimately creating an evolved and organic kind of show that was more a work of art than a humble entertainment, he choreographed and directed the musicals Peter Pan (1954), West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). Meanwhile, during the 1940s and 50s he periodically returned to the New York City Ballet, where he created such works as Interplay (1945), Facsimile (1946), The Cage (1951), Fanfare (1953), The Concert (1956), and Moves (1959). Essentially leaving the world of musicals after the enormous success of Fiddler, he returned to the City Ballet and in the following years choreographed such works as Dances at a Gathering (1969), probably his finest ballet; Goldberg Variations (1971); Ives, Songs (1988); and Brandenburg (1997). From 1983 to 1990 Robbins was the City Ballet's co-ballet master in chief with Peter Martins , and many of his 66 ballets continue to be performed by the company.

Bibliography: See biographies by G. Lawrence (2001), D. Jowitt (2004), and A. Vaill (2006); C. Conrad, Jerome Robbins: That Broadway Man, That Ballet Man (2001); R. E. Long, Broadway, The Golden Years (2001).

Robbins, Jerome (1918–98) US ballet choreographer and dancer. In 1940, he joined the American Ballet Theater. Robbins is celebrated for his choreography of Broadway musicals, including The King and I (1951, filmed 1956), West Side Story (1957, filmed 1961) and Fiddler on the Roof (1964, filmed 1971). From 1983 to 1990, he was joint ballet master of the New York City Ballet with Peter Martins.

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.