Jerome Robbins
A Life in Dance
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- US$11.99
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- US$11.99
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A lively and inspired biography celebrating the centennial of this master choreographer, dancer, and stage director
Jerome Robbins (1918–1998) was born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz and grew up in Weehawken, New Jersey, where his Russian-Jewish immigrant parents owned the Comfort Corset Company. Robbins, who was drawn to dance at a young age, resisted the idea of joining the family business. In 1936 he began working with Gluck Sandor, who ran a dance group and convinced him to change his name to Jerome Robbins. He went on to become a choreographer and director who worked in ballet, on Broadway, and in film. His stage productions include West Side Story, Peter Pan, and Fiddler on the Roof. In this deft biography, Wendy Lesser presents Jerome Robbins’s life through his major dances, providing a sympathetic, detailed portrait of her subject.
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This brief but carefully researched biography (part of the Jewish Lives series) builds a persuasive case for the importance of Jerome Robbins's career as a choreographer who explored "the overlapping terrain between ballet and modern dance." Lesser, founder and editor of The Threepenny Review, uses original sources, including Robbins's journals, to create a portrait of the tortured, angry, guilt-ridden perfectionist, whom composer Stephen Sondheim described as "the only genius I ever met." Although it touches on Robbins's personal life, the book focuses most intently on his choreography, from the famous dance scenes in such Broadway shows as Fiddler on the Roof and West Side Story to such ballets as The Cage and The Goldberg Variations. About the scene in Fiddler in which Jews and Cossacks encounter one another, she writes, "Here is cultural opposition presented theatrically... here is fear, a rare emotion in dance, made palpable through aggressively choreographed movement." Stories of Robbins's famously difficult personality are contrasted with examinations of his productive working relationships with colleagues like composer Leonard Bernstein and mentor George Balanchine. The results is an evenhanded portrait of an important choreographer.
