Content provided in partnership with
Jerome Robbins : Jerome Robbins made indelible changes in both musical theater and classical ballet - 1918-98
Dance Magazine, Oct, 1998 by Clive Barnes
As an individual Robbins could be difficult and prickly, even though he was very generous, with time, help, and money, often through his specially created Robbins Foundation, and had, when he wanted to use it, a great warmth with an obvious a gift for friendship. Undoubtedly, like Elia Kazan, he was personally damaged by the controversy regarding the friendly testimony he gave the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the early 1950s, but he always considered that he had acted on his conscience. Yet there were people in the theater--such as Zero Mostel, with whom he worked on Fiddler--who never forgave his naming of names. I suspect this left a mark on Robbins, one he wore with a mixture of disdain and dignity.
He was an extremely demanding man, not always popular with his dancers, although always respected. With ballet companies--and he worked chiefly with NYCB, of course, and later with the Paris Opera Ballet--he could be a prima donna. But his demands were always met. He was a perfectionist, who sometimes, very quietly, reached perfection. No one does more. And for Robbins, perfectionism led him to a position as one of the few twentieth-century innovators of the Broadway theater--an achievement that by itself would let him rank with the likes of Peter Brook--and more important and more lasting, as one of the greatest choreographers of all time.
He was memorable as the smiling martinet Ringmaster in Circus Polka, the ballet he created for children from the School of American Ballet during City Ballet's first Stravinsky Festival in 1972, and as the master magician, Herr Drosselmeyer, which he danced for the first and last time (well, being Jerry, he sneaked in two or three "preview" performances to ensure he got it right on the night!) when Peter Martins gave his retirement performance in The Nutcracker, in 1984.
An ironically grinning, whip-snapping disciplinarian, and a gift-bringing, eccentric magician of genius--yeah, I think that's about right for Jerry. And we'll never see quite his like again,
Clive Barnes, a senior editor of Dance Magazine and the dance and theater critic of the New York Post, has contributed to Dance Magazine since 1958.
COPYRIGHT 1998 Dance Magazine, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Health
- AAACN Viewpoint
- ABNF Journal, The
- AIDS Treatment News
- AMAA Journal
- Aboriginal Nurse, The
- Adolescence
- Adolescent Psychiatry
- Advances in Skin & Wound Care
- Age and Ageing
- Alabama Nurse
- Alberta RN
- Alcohol Research & Health
- Alternative Medicine Review
- American Family Physician
- American Fitness
- Men's Fitness
- Psychology Today
- Shape