- main
- forum
- criticaldance
- features
- reviews
- interviews
- links
- gallery
- whoweare
- search
Subscribe to the monthly for free!
Advertising Information
|
![]() |
Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His
Dance
 by
Deborah Jowitt
Book review by Leland Windreich
September, 2004
In Greg Lawrence’s biography of Jerome Robbins there is a quote that
has stuck in my memory. The dancer Mel Tomlinson sums up his association
with the choreographer with the statement “Well, if I do go to hell,
I won’t be afraid of the devil … because I have worked with
Jerome Robbins.” Lawrence’s over 600 page study, appropriately
titled “Dance with Demons; The Life of Jerome Robbins” (Putnam
2001), involves a sharp focus on his subject’s anxieties and the
wretched, often erratic behavior that his condition inspired. This year
Deborah Jowitt has produced another book, equal in size, in which the
demons take second place to her revelation of the man’s vitality,
his incessant occupation with his creative impulses, and his production
of wonderful works for the theatre.
Jowitt is one of the most respected dance critics in the business and
has been reviewing performances for The Village Voice for 37 years. She
also teaches in the dance department of New York University’s Tisch
School of the Arts. In 2002 she received a Guggenheim fellowship to write
this work. This is her first biography, and she has approached it with
a devout respect for her subject and a persistence that kept her immersed
in the materials and the personal connections relative to Robbins’
life and work. In writing with the approval of the Jerome Robbins Foundation
and the Robbins Rights Trust, she was allowed access to vast resources
of documents, including the choreographer’s personal archives, his
diaries and letters, and filmed records of his works for ballet and the
stage. She made contact with members of the Robbins family and with hundreds
of friends, colleagues, and associates who knew the choreographer over
a lifetime of activity.
Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz was born in Weehawken, New Jersey, in 1918 to
Russian-Jewish immigrants. His father ran a successful corset factory
and hoped that his son might succeed him in the business. But Robbins
and his older sister Sonia had other plans. She had started training in
dance, and Jerome soon followed in her direction. They gravitated to the
studio of the eclectic Gluck Sandor, who operated his Dance Theatre in
a loft in uptown Manhattan. Robbins was 18 when he began his studies,
which were later supplemented with training in popular dance, Spanish
dancing, and classical ballet. Slight in build and too old to aspire for
a career as a danseur noble, Robbins excelled in expressionistic dances,
in comedy and in activities requiring inventiveness and imagination. Author
Jowitt makes it clear that as a late teen-ager he had potential for pursuing
any number of occupations in the arts. His expressive diaries and poems
show an extraordinary gift for words. He was also a talented puppeteer.
Summer work in the camps of the borscht circuit brought him in contact
with many of the young performers who would become celebrities in the
New York theatre within the decade. He was hired in the corps de ballet
for several Broadway musicals, including “Great Lady” and
“Stars in your Eyes.” In these shows he had his first contact
with George Balanchine, who made dances for the popular theatre to support
his ambitions to form an American ballet company. But in 1939 another
faction emerged from the parochial Mordkin Ballet called Ballet Theatre,
an ambitious undertaking which aspired to become a living museum of dance.
It was bankrolled largely by the heiress Lucia Chase and managed by Richard
Pleasant. Many of the young ballet-trained dancers from the musicals became
members of the troupe, including Nora Kaye, Alicia and Fernando Alonso,
Maria Karnilova, Richard Reed and John Kriza. Robbins was accepted for
the company’s second season, 1940-41, on the basis of his vitality
and brilliant stage persona.
At Ballet Theatre, he settled in with the final variant of the WASP names
that he had used in his earlier engagements, and Jerry Rabinowitz launched
a career as Jerome Robbins, following a trend that prevailed among many
of the offsprings of Jewish immigrants who chose a life in the theatre
(his lifelong friend and sometime fiancée Nora Koreff became Nora
Kaye). Ballet Theatre offered him a smorgasbord of roles, including the
occasional turn as a classical cavalier but generally in dramatic or comic
assignments. He worked under Mikhail Fokine, Leonide Massine, Anton Dolin,
Antony Tudor, and Agnes de Mille. Within two years he was allowed to portray
the role of Petrouchka in Fokine’s popular ballet and succeeded
Leonide Massine as the Gypsy dancer in “Capriccio Espagnol.”
Determined to become a choreographer, Robbins submitted a number of ideas
in manuscript form to his directors. By 1943 his first assignment was
approved, and his instant hit, “Fancy Free,” thrust him into
a prominent role in the American theatre that would occupy him for the
next five decades and install him as a major creative force.
From “Fancy Free” for the ballet and its outgrowth for the
Broadway stage, “On the Town,” Robbins alternated between
the two media throughout his career, adding a third—motion pictures—as
his fame flourished. Some critics, including Joan Acocella in The New
Yorker, firmly believed that Robbins’ ballets were “never
as good as his Broadway work, the thing he walked away from,” and
that his presence in later years as ballet master at New York City Ballet
was a matter of “banging on the gates of someone else’s property.”
Jowitt obviously disagrees with this opinion. The bulk of her study involves
intricate descriptions of both his ballet offerings and his Broadway and
Hollywood projects and vivid commentaries on the circumstances of their
creation. She shows as well the process of refinement that took place
in his ballet choreography as he moved toward simpler and more academic
modes. As a dance critic her descriptions of his ballets are perhaps more
vivid, but she presents no editorial preference for one form over the
other.
As for the demons that obsessed Jerome Robbins, Jowitt gives ample consideration
to the issues that troubled him. His reluctance to be a Jew and his self-loathing
for his homosexual inclinations come across as contradictions. He made
no effort to pass for a Gentile and managed to produce a number of outstanding
theatre pieces involving Jewish themes, notably the musical “Fiddler
on the Roof” and the ballet “The Dybbuk” for New York
City Ballet. Nor did he make any effort to disguise his sexual nature.
Actually a bisexual, he consorted with several young women over the years
but seemed to prefer male lovers for his long-term involvements. He dodged
the military draft during World War II by admitting that he was homosexual,
and when the examining physician asked him when he had last had contact
with another man, his answer was “Last night.” He did not,
nor did his openly gay colleague, Antony Tudor, ever use the dance as
a medium to convey the issue of homosexuality. Both instinctively preferred
the yin and yang that traditional ballet seems to demand. Perhaps the
most pressing matter on his conscience was his revelation to the House
Un-American Activities Committee of names of cellmates in a brief involvement
with the Communist Party. It brought a pall to the careers of several
prominent people of the theatre who would never forgive Robbins for his
actions.
Jowitt, always a friendly writer in her dance critiques, maintains a presence
in each chapter, and her obvious affection for her subject and admiration
of his extraordinary gifts prevails in the rich tapestry of experiences
that unfolds. She provides in the process a splendidly documented account
of a complex and varied career enjoyed by a leading light in the American
theatre of the 20th century, one that will be cherished by scholars in
the years to come.
Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance, by Deborah Jowitt.
Simon & Schuster, 2004. 619 pp. ISBN: 0-684-86985-3. $40.00.
Edited by Jeff.
Read related
stories in the press and see what others are saying. Click here.
|
