Jerome Robbins (October 11, 1918 – July 29, 1998), was an American theater producer, director, and dance choreographer known primarily for Broadway Theater and Ballet/Dance, but who also occasionally directed films and directed/produced for television. Robbins was born Jerome Rabinowitz in 1918 and grew up in New Jersey. He danced numerous quasi-dramatic roles for Balanchine — including Prodigal Son, Tyl Eulenspiegel and as a principal opposite the glamorous Tanaquil Le Clercq in Bourrée Fantasque — before retiring from performance in the mid 1950’s; but it was as a choreographer that he made his mark. Ballets like The Guests (1949, score by Marc Blitzstein), Age of Anxiety (1950, to Bernstein), and the terrifying fable The Cage (1951, to Stravinsky), showcased his flair for drama, his all-American sass and energy, and his affinity for modern music. Generation generation). For the next three years he worked on an experimental theatre project, the American Theatre Laboratory, but in 1969 he returned to NYCB. #100daysofRobbins #day13” • Fancy Free was Robbins' first ballet, created for Ballet Theatre in 1944 when he was just 25. He had been burning to choreograph a ballet himself for the company, preferably one with an American theme, to American music; but all his ideas were too grandiose for the perennially strapped company to consider. Robbins, Jerome (Creator) Dates / Origin Date Created: 1930 - 2001 Library locations Jerome Robbins Dance Division Shelf locator: (S) *MGZMD 130 Topics American Ballet Theatre Ballets: U.S.A. American Theatre Laboratory (New York, N.Y.) Musical revues & comedies-- United States Styne, Jule, 1905-1994. The first time he created the choreography for a ballet was in 1944 for the show Fancy Free, which was later made into the musical On the Town. Look, Ma was succeeded by one of Robbins’s rare flops, a show called That’s the Ticket (1948), which Robbins directed but did not choreograph. He studied a wide array of dance traditions, appeared with the Gluck Sandor–Felicia Sorel Dance Center, and danced in the chorus of several Broadway musicals. Robbins spent three summers at Tamiment and taking on one-shot roles in ballet performances at Jones Beach, the New York World’s Fair, and elsewhere; he found work during the regular theater season in the Broadway choruses of Great Lady (1938), Stars in Your Eyes (1939), and Keep Off the Grass (1940) — the last-named choreographed by George Balanchine. …exhilarating dance sequences choreographed by. Jerome Robbins was a famous American choreographer, who was born on October 11, 1918.As a person born on this date, Jerome Robbins is listed in our database as the 76th most popular celebrity for the day (October 11) and the 53rd most popular for the year (1918). Wendy Lesser, founder and editor of The Threepenny … For the Broadway stage, Robbins choreographed a string of musicals, including Billion Dollar Baby (1946), High Button Shoes (1947), and Look Ma, I’m Dancin’ (1948). He created such ballets as Interplay (1945) and Facsimile (1946). Robbins received the 1958 Tony Award for best choreography for the Broadway version and Academy Awards for his choreography and codirection (with Robert Wise) of the highly successful 1961 film version. Unwilling to work in the corset factory, he tried to find employment in some form of show business; and through his sister Sonia, who had already danced professionally with Irma Duncan and Senya Gluck-Sandor’s Dance Center, he got an apprenticeship with Sandor’s company. He dropped out of college when he realized his limited potential as a student and found work training as a ballet dancer at the Sandor Dance School. He was trained in modern dance and ballet and began his career in 1937 as a dancer in musicals. Robbins was born Jerome Rabinowitz in New York on October 11, 1918, to Russian Jewish parents who came to America to flee the pogroms. On April 18, 1944, Fancy Free premiered at the Metropolitan Opera House to a raucous two dozen curtain calls; and in December of that year On the Town, a musical comedy based on the ballet, with music by Bernstein, dances by Robbins, sets by Smith (who also produced), and book and lyrics by a pair of Bernstein’s cabaret buddies named Betty Comden and Adolph Green, had a fairy-tale opening on Broadway. Ironically, his career seemed to take on added luster in this troubled time. Jerome Robbins: his birthday, what he did before fame, his family life, fun trivia facts, popularity rankings, and more. Biographical/historical: Jerome Robbins (born 11 October 1918 in New York City) was the younger of two children of Harry Rabinowitz, who emigrated to America from Poland in 1904, and his wife Lena Rips. Gluck-Sandor was a hybrid as a choreographer — ballet-trained, dedicated to modern dance, but also a veteran of Broadway, burlesque, and vaudeville — and his expressive, theatrical style attracted Robbins from the outset. He won an Academy Award for his direction nonetheless — sharing the Oscar with co-director Robert Wise — as well as one for choreography. West Side Story was immediately recognized as a major achievement in the history of the American musical theatre, with its innovative setting, electric pacing, and tense, volatile dance sequences. His Broadway career is well represented by West Side Story (1957), a musical that transplants the tragic story of Romeo and Juliet to the gritty milieu of rival street gangs in New York City. Biography . He was still experimenting with contemporary music, with ballets to Philip Glass (Glass Pieces, 1983) and Steve Reich (Octet, 1985), but it was Bach who spoke most clearly to him in his last decade, when he made the spare, poetic A Suite of Dances (1994) for Mikhail Baryshnikov to Bach’s suites for unaccompanied cello; the deceptively simple Two- and Three-Part Inventions (1994) for the students of the School of American Ballet, and the exuberant Brandenburg (1997) for City Ballet. There followed a fertile creative period in which Robbins made such vastly different works as the moonlit, expressive In the Night (1970), The Goldberg Variations (1971), which explored Bach’s thematic geometry, and Watermill (1972), a Noh-like meditation on the passage of a man’s life. Born Jerome Rabinowitz in 1918, he grew up in New Jersey and studied a range of dance styles including ballet, modern, Spanish, oriental and interpretive. It was not just the jazz inflections or familiar, everyday gestures incorporated into the choreography that made the piece special. Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz was born in New York on October 11, 1918 and raised in Weehawken, New Jersey. Jerome Robbins' was born on October 11, 1918. In 1944 Robbins choreographed his first, spectacularly successful ballet, Fancy Free, with a musical score by the young composer Leonard Bernstein. To commemorate this anniversary, two separate tributes warrant our attention: Wendy Lesser’s biography Jerome Robbins: A Life in Dance and the retrospective exhibition Voice of My City: Jerome Robbins and New York. So the Roaring Twenties musical, Billion Dollar Baby (1946 — with book and lyrics by Comden and Green and music by Morton Gould), revolved around a gold-digging bathing beauty who serially married for money; 1947’s High Button Shoes (his first collaboration with composer Jule Styne) was a nostalgic romp set in New Jersey in 1913 and featuring a Keystone Kops ballet. Petipa, you, me — we can do.”. In the summer of 1940 he was accepted into the recently-formed Ballet Theatre, where he soon advanced from the corps de ballet to solo roles which showed off the taut fluidity with which he compensated for his lack of heroic classical technique: the Young Man in Agnes De Mille’s Three Virgins and a Devil, an apple-munching Hermes in Helen of Troy, and — the role which made him famous — the tragic puppet in Petroushka. In addition he collaborated with Balanchine, with whom he now shared the title of Ballet Master, on dances for Firebird (1970) and Pulcinella (1972) — a demonstration of the collegiality and mutual respect that had always marked their relationship. The ballet—in which Robbins danced "the rumba" sailor—was set to a commissioned score by the relatively unknown Leonard Bernstein and was an instant masterpiece. Born in Riga, Latvia, on January 27, 1948, Mikhail Nikolaevich Baryshnikov went on to become one of the leading dancers of the 20th century. Jerome Robbins (1890-1955), Trustee of Anderson County, and farmer; born in Scott County of Scotch-Irish descent, February 12, 1890; son of Andrew Johnson Robbins (1862-1923) and Julia Ann (Hughett) Robbins (1861-1937); paternal grandparents William Robbins and Lucinda (Luallen) Robbins; maternal grandparents Alex Hughett and Sallie (Delk) Hughett. On Broadway he quickly established himself as the choreographer of the moment at a time when musical comedies were evolving out of the stylish but contentless song-and-dance anthologies that had showcased the talents of the Gershwins and Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart. Corrections? In 1956, Robbins joined the American Ballet T… While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Essence did not mean homogeneity, however: Robbins’s work was still as protean as ever, from the sensuous and jazzy lyricism of In G Major (1975) and the opera-house pyrotechnics of Four Seasons (1979) to the spiky Opus 19: The Dreamer (1979) and the elegiac In Memory of… (1985). Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Rabinowitz studied chemistry for one year at New York University before embarking on a career as a dancer in 1936. Jerome Robbins was born in New York City on Friday, October 11, 1918 (G.I. In 1937, Jerome Robbinsbegan dancing at Camp Tamiment and in the choruses of Broadway shows like Grat Lady and Keep Off The Grass. Later that year Robbins and Bernstein, in collaboration with the lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green, expanded Fancy Free into a successful Broadway musical called On the Town. Premiered as Dybbuk (1974) and based on the S. Anski play, it was first revised as The Dybbuk Variations (1974) and then as A Suite of Dances (1980), a ballet-in-progress which Robbins kept trying to reduce to its essence. Robbins then to… He also created the dance sequences for the musicals Call Me Madam (1950), Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I (1951), and The Pajama Game (1954); and he adapted, choreographed, and directed a musical version of Peter Pan (1954) that was subsequently adapted for television in 1955 and for which Robbins won an Emmy Award. Jerome Robbins (born Jerome Rabinowitz in 1918) was one of the most important figures in American dance and musical theater in the twentieth century. He directed and choreographed the popular musical Gypsy in 1959 and the even more successful Fiddler on the Roof in 1964. Originally intended to fund dance and theatre projects, the foundation also provided financial support to projects combating the effects of the AIDS crisis. Meanwhile at New York City Ballet he created two masterpieces, the lyrical Afternoon of a Faun (1953) and the hilarious send-up, The Concert (1956), among other works. After West Side Story Robbins left New York City Ballet for a time and formed his own company, Ballets: USA, to appear at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. Robbins created many important ballets for NYCB, some of the earliest being The Cage (1951), Afternoon of a Faun (1953), and The Concert (1956). To write the score he sought out the services of a young unknown composer named Leonard Bernstein, and Ballet Theatre’s Oliver Smith agreed to design the scenery. Many of his later ballets are more classical in style and more abstract in subject matter than his earlier works. An overly whimsical mishmash, it closed in Philadelphia after ten days. Rabinowitz was at first a shopkeeper with a delicatessen on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; in the 1920s he moved the family to Jersey City and then to Weehawken, New Jersey, where he and a brother-in-law established the Comfort Corset Company. He first learnt dancing from his sister Sonya and later studied modern dance at the Dance Center with Senia Glück-Sandor and Felicia Sorel, while also studying ballet with Ella Daganova and Spanish and Asian dance. Jerome Robbins was born to Harry and Lena Rabinowitz on Oct. 11, 1918, in New York City. Rabinowitz was at first a shopkeeper with a delicatessen on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; in the 1920’s he moved the family to Jersey City and then to Weehawken, New Jersey, where he and a brother-in-law established the Comfort Corset Company. (Stephen Sondheim, thirteen years younger, joined the team as lyricist years later.) But he was beginning to gain an audience: some of his dances were performed under the auspices of the Theatre Arts Committee at New York’s 92nd Street YMHA and others as part of The Straw Hat Revue, which Tamiment producer Max Liebman opened on Broadway in 1939. For the next phase of his career Robbins was to divide his time between musicals and ballet. (The original musical was successfully revived on Broadway in 1980.) But the fledgling dancer — who like other members of his family took the surname of Robbins for work in the theater — also studied ballet with Ella Daganova and in 1937 appeared in the Yiddish Art Theatre production of The Brothers Ashkenazi, directed by and starring Maurice Schwartz, for which Sandor did the choreography. He changed each of his worlds from the inside out. In 1948 Robbins joined the newly founded New York City Ballet (NYCB) as both dancer and choreographer, and the following year he became its associate artistic director under George Balanchine. In accordance with Robbins’ earlier wishes, in 2003 the foundation awarded the first Jerome Robbins Prizes in recognition of excellence in dance. He enrolled as a student at New York University, but because of his failing grades and the lasting effects of the Depression, his parents insisted he drop out and work … Seemingly re-charged from this work, he re-emerged at City Ballet with Dances at a Gathering (1969), a poignant and playful celebration of youth and love which was widely hailed as a masterpiece. Jerome Robbins, born Jerome Rabinowitz, was the son of working class Russian-Jewish immigrants. His work from this period consisted mainly of burlesque-like blackout sketches on the one hand and dramatic works with strong social content, like Death of a Loyalist or Strange Fruit, (set to Abel Meeropol’s song about a lynching) on the other. And his association with Balanchine gave him a security and sense of kinship that nourished his genius. Robbins was born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz, exactly two months before the end of World War I, in the Jewish Maternity Hospital in the heart of Manhattan’s Lower East Side – a neighborhood populated by many immigrants. But at this point Robbins made a life altering career-change. Encouraged to “think small” he came up with the idea for a ballet about three sailors on shore leave in New York City. Jerome Robbins, Writer: West Side Story. Robbins was first known for his skillful use of contemporary American themes in ballets and Broadway and Hollywood musicals. Success came early to … He got full credit and then some, however, for Fiddler on the Roof (1964), the musical setting of Sholem Aleichem stories which he choreographed and directed, bringing to life as an organic musical whole the lost world of the Russian shtetl. Robbins continued to work on Broadway, as the choreographer of two Irving Berlin shows, Miss Liberty (1949) and Call Me Madam (1950), Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I (1951), and Two’s Company (1952), a revue starring Bette Davis. As Balanchine once said to him, speaking of the legendary Russian ballet master Marius Petipa: “Very few people can do. Updates? Two Broadway hits followed — both shows he had originally agreed to direct, then withdrew from, and finally returned to when each seemed in danger of shipwreck during out-of-town tryouts. Today Jerome Robbins would be 102 years old. In the meantime Robbins had also directed the ultimate backstage musical, Gypsy (1959) with Ethel Merman, and now he began to branch out into non-musical theater. A self-proclaimed homosexual, he had romances or relationships with both men and women, some famous—like Montgomery Clift and Natalie Wood—some less so. His last work, Brandenburg, premiered there in 1997. LAST YEAR marked the centennial of the birth of acclaimed dancer and choreographer Jerome Robbins (1918-1998). With the help of a 1966 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he established the American Theatre Lab to explore experimental music-theater techniques, from dance to Noh drama, with a small handpicked company in a workshop setting for a period of two years. Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, a compilation of excerpts from 11 Broadway musicals that Robbins had directed or choreographed, opened on Broadway in 1989. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants who had many show business connections, including vaudeville performers and theater owners. He later took lessons in modern, Spanish, and Oriental dance. Best known for his direction of Broadway and film hits like, 'On the Town' and 'West Side Story,' as well as his work with the New York City Ballet, legendary choreographer Jerome Robbins was born on this day in 1918. He grew up in Weehawken, New Jersey, and was in his late teens when he began studying at the Sandor-Sorel Dance Center in Brooklyn. Associated With. In 1940 he moved over to ballet. And, speaking of the collaboration that made West Side Story, “Why couldn’t we, in aspiration, try to bring our deepest talents together to the commercial theater?” His own work answered both questions in the affirmative. Intending to study either chemistry or journalism, he matriculated at New York University in the autumn of 1935; but the Depression took a turn for the worse in 1936 and his family could no longer support his education — especially considering that he was, by his own account, failing two courses (math and French) out of five. For it he made the explosive New York Export: Opus Jazz (1958), a ballet without music called Moves (1959), and other works; the company toured extensively in Europe but — despite enthusiastic notices and even an appearance at the Kennedy White House — it failed to find an ongoing audience in the United States and was disbanded in 1961. Jerome Robbins Foundation on Instagram: “Jerome Robbins and Annabelle Lyon in “Summer Day” in 1947. Synopsis. Young Jerome, who showed an early aptitude for music, dancing, and theatrics, attended schools in Weehawken and graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1935. He is 102 years old and is a Libra. In 1965 Robbins resumed creating ballets with his acclaimed Les Noces. His dances were often controversial, one of them being the “Strange Fruit,” later performed in New York City at the 92nd Street Y by Billie Holiday. INTERNATIONAL DANCE, FILM & VIDEOTAPE FESTIVAL & CONFERENCE Dedicated to Jerome Robbins Sponsored by the Dance Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and the International Dance Council, Inc./UNESCO; 1982. Broadway was moving in the direction of rock spectacles like Hair and Jesus Christ, Superstar, and Robbins didn’t want to move with it. In 1962 he directed the American premiere of Arthur Kopit’s mordant mother-son comedy, Oh, Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You In the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad and in 1963 a production of Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children starring Anne Bancroft. During this time he also began creating dances for Tamiment’s Revues, both comic and dramatic genre. Born on October 11, 1918 in New York, New York, Jerome Robbins went on to become a dancer and celebrated choreographer, earning raves for his ballet debut piece “Fancy Free.” He eventually served as director and/or choreographer on a number of musicals destined to become classics, including. By then he was in fragile health, following a bicycle accident in 1990 and heart-valve surgery in 1994; in 1996 he began showing signs of a form of Parkinson’s disease and his hearing was poor; yet he insisted on staging Les Noces for City Ballet (1998). Robbins had already been made Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, and had won 5 Donaldson Awards, 5 Tony Awards, 2 Academy Awards, 1 Emmy Award, the Kennedy Center Honors, and numerous other prizes; on the evening of his death, the lights of Broadway were dimmed for a moment in tribute. Born Jerome Rabinowitz in New York City in 1918, Jerome Robbins repudiated his Jewish roots along with his name only to reclaim them with his triumphant staging of Fiddler on the Roof. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). From "Fiddler on the Roof" to NYCB, he was a Jewish American genius — a very conflicted one. And 1948’s Look, Ma, I’m Dancin’ (which he co-directed with George Abbot, and for which he received the credit “conceived by Jerome Robbins”) was the autobiographical backstage story of a super-ambitious dancer-choreographer’s collision with the brewery heiress backing his ballet company; his changed character is mirrored in the two ballets he creates — the first a brash, over-complicated expression of youthful hubris, the second altogether subtler, more thoughtful and human. This ballet, featuring three American sailors on shore leave in New York City during World War II, displayed Robbins’ acute sense of theatre and his ability to capture the essence of contemporary American dance using the vocabulary of classical ballet. In 1957 he teamed up once again with Leonard Bernstein on a musical he had been discussing with him and playwright Arthur Laurents for some years: West Side Story, a retelling of Romeo and Juliet set against a background of gang warfare in New York’s Puerto Rican ghetto. Robbins continued to write ballets for NYCB, including Dances at a Gathering (1969); The Goldberg Variations (1971); Requiem Canticles (1972); In G Major (1975); Glass Pieces, performed to the music of Phillip Glass (1983); In Memory of... (1985); Ives, Songs (1988); and West Side Story Suite (1995). Deprived of a college education by the Depression, he began his career as a … Childhood & Early Life Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz was born on October 11, 1918, in New York City, USA, to Harry Rabinowitz and his wife Lena Rips. Jerome Robbins was born October 11, 1918, in New York City. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. He was the son of Lena (Rips) and Harry Rabinowitz. “Why can’t we do ballets about our own subjects, meaning our life here in America?” he asked before making Fancy Free. JEROME ROBBINS (born 11 October 1918 in New York City) was the younger of two children of Harry Rabinowitz, who emigrated to America from Poland in 1904, and his wife Lena Rips. At Ballet Theater he had followed Fancy Free with a series of dances that integrated the classic vocabulary with modern subject matter: among them the be-bop ballet Interplay (1945) and Facsimile (1946), an angst-ridden exploration of a love triangle with a new score by Bernstein. He was a resident choreographer and a ballet master there until 1983, when he and Peter Martins became ballet masters in chief (codirectors) of the company shortly before Balanchine’s death. It was the last thing he did; two months later he suffered a massive stroke, and he died at his home in New York on July 29, 1998. He was born in New York, New York. JEROME ROBBINS (born 11 October 1918 in New York City) was the younger of two children of Harry Rabinowitz, who emigrated to America from Poland in 1904, and his wife Lena Rips. A ballet portraying contemporary American characters behaving in contemporary American fashion was virtually unheard of at the time, and wartime audiences recognized the people onstage at once. But although reviews for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962) didn’t mention his name, and although for Funny Girl (1964) he was listed only as “production supervisor,” he reshaped both those musicals radically. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. ©2001 by Amanda Vaill This article first appeared in SCRIBNER’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LIVES. He had one sibling. Jerome Robbins is a Libra and was born in The Year of the Horse Life. Robbins never really left City Ballet again, except for a leave of absence in 1989 and forays into the theater for workshops of an adaptation of Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule (1987) and of The Poppa Piece (1991), and the triumphant staging of his anthology show, Jerome Robbins’ Broadway (1989), for which he won his fifth Tony Award. Since 1958 Robbins had worked with the ballet company he had founded, Ballets U.S.A., which toured sporadically until 1961. Directed by Robbins, with his electrifying street-smart choreography integrated into the action, West Side Story was arguably the first “concept musical”; it broke the mold of the Broadway show and also established Robbins’s reputation as a perfectionistic, difficult taskmaster — a reputation that was one factor in his dismissal as director of the 1961 film version. Omissions? He accomplished a similar feat with his mammoth staging of Stravinsky’s Les Noces (1965) for American Ballet Theatre, but then retreated from the pressures of huge collaborative productions. Young Jerome, who showed an early aptitude for music, dancing, and theatri… He was bisexual and at one point was in a relationship with actor Montgomery Clift. Increasingly his work seemed to move in a more and more abstract direction, away from the character-driven dances of his youth — a process reflected in the changes he made in his last collaboration with Bernstein. In 1958 Robbins formed a charitable organization bearing his name, the Jerome Robbins Foundation. Born on October 11, 1918 in New York, New York, Jerome Robbins went on to become a dancer and celebrated choreographer, earning raves for his ballet debut piece “Fancy Free.” Robbins was first known for his skillful use of contemporary American themes in ballets and Broadway and Hollywood Jerome Robbins is credited as Director, Producer, Performer, Choreographer, Conception, Writer, Source Material and Other. (About this time he and his parents changed the family name to Robbins.) Jerome Robbins (1918–1998) was born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz on October 11, 1918, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the son of Polish-Russian immigrants. Jerome Robbins was one of the founding members of the Ballet Theatre when it was formed in 1940 portraying a variety of roles for several years before devising his own creations such as 'Fancy Free' about 3 sailors on leave in New York which marked a long association with Leonard Bernstein. Robbins resigned as codirector of NYCB in 1990, though he continued to choreograph for the company. From that moment until his death more than fifty years later Robbins’s primacy on Broadway and in ballet was assured; but he did more than reach the top in his two spheres of influence. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. In the summer of 1937 Robbins began dancing and choreographing at Tamiment, a progressive-movement resort in Pennsylvania’s Pocono mountains which featured a resident singing-acting-dancing troupe and weekend revues starring emerging talents like Danny Kaye, Imogene Coca, and Carol Channing. Jerome Robbins, original surname Rabinowitz, (born Oct. 11, 1918, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died July 29, 1998, New York City), one of the most popular and imaginative American choreographers of the 20th century. Long considered “the golden boy” of dance, he lived a life of contradiction and extremes. Robbins was born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz in the Jewish Maternity Hospital at 270 East Broadway on Manhattan's Lower East Side – a neighborhood populated by many immigrants. Robbins won the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for best choreographer in 1948 for High Button Shoes. Robbins shows — and as he began to direct as well as create ideas and dances for them, they truly were Robbins shows — had, or aimed to have, a story, characters, a point. Jerome Robbins was born in New York City in 1918. Jerome Robbins was one of the founding members of the Ballet Theatre when it was formed in 1940 portraying a variety of roles for several years before devising his own creations such as 'Fancy Free' about 3 sailors on leave in New York which marked a long association with Leonard Bernstein. But in 1949 he left Ballet Theater to join George Balanchine’s new-born New York City Ballet, where he was almost immediately named Associate Artistic Director. In the more than sixty years in which he had been active in the theater, he had transformed it because he never stopped asking questions. Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership, This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jerome-Robbins, Official Site of the Jerome Robbins Trust and Foundation, Public Broadcasting Service - Biography of Jerome Robbins, American Ballet Theatre - Biography of Jerome Robbins, Jerome Robbins - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). He staged the all-American Ford 50th Anniversary Show (1953) for television with Ethel Merman and Mary Martin; co-directed The Pajama Game (1954) on Broadway; conceived, directed, and choreographed Peter Pan (1954) starring Mary Martin; directed Aaron Copland’s opera The Tender Land (1954); directed and co-choreographed Bells Are Ringing (1956) starring Judy Holliday; and choreographed the film version of The King and I (1956). 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