Jerome Robbins Began His Journey As a Dancer in the Ballet Theatre Company, Which Would Later Be Renamed the American Ballet Theatre

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Jerome Robbins began his journey as a dancer in the Ballet Theatre Company, which would later be renamed the American Ballet Theatre. The company produced classical ballets, but also encouraged innovative work. When the company faced financial problems and had to bring in new managment, Jerome grew weary of only performing in pieces that told stories of the past. Thus, Fancy Free was born. Premiered in April of 1944, Fancy Free was a revolutionary ballet that focused on telling the story of the modern men and women in New York. The three main characters were created specifically for himself and two of his close friends. A big focus of his was to properly convey the characters so that the audience had a clear understanding of them. It was a new idea, telling the stories of the present day, but he was not alone in this movement. Other choreographers, such as Agnes De Mille and Antony Tudor, were also producing these kinds of works. Though his dancers were performing difficult choreography, it was important to him that they still seemed like real people. His rehearsals tended to run longer than most simply because he wanted to perfect the “attitudes” conveyed in the piece. Eventually, Fancy Free became the basis of the musical On the Town, thus launching his career in musical theatre. Some of his most notable works on Broadway were West Side Story, Fiddler On the Roof, and The Pajama Game. When working on West Side Story, in order to facilitate the hostility between the on-stage gangs, they were not permitted to associate with each other off-stage. This goes hand-in-hand with the idea that he wanted the characters to be as realistic as possible. Having compelling characters that can dance ballet while conveying a gang-member is a major part of Jerome Robbin’s legacy. In fact, this legacy fed into the expectation of the American dancer to be versatile. .

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Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein: The Power of Music is the “first large-scale museum exhibition to illustrate Bernstein’s life, Jewish identity, and social activism,” according to the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, where you can catch it until Sept. 2. (A national tour will follow.) There are artifacts ranging from Bernstein’s piano (a Baldwin, though he used to invoke another manufacturer to tell people how to pronounce his name: “No one ever called a Steinway a STEEN-way!”), an annotated copy of Romeo and Juliet in which he formulated ideas for West Side Story, the mezuzah from his studio, the ketubah from his marriage to Costa Rican actress Felicia Cohn Montealegre, and his family Haggadah … which, unsurprisingly, contains additional sheet music. There are dozens of photos, hand-drawn set designs, snippets of costume fabric, personal letters, album covers, and illustrations. There’s the earliest known photograph of teen Lenny conducting; his trademark impressive swoop-y matinee-idol hair is already evident as he theatrically leads a Jewish summer-camp orchestra of seven nebbish-y boys with triangles and tiny cymbals. (The photo is grandiloquently labeled “Onota Rhythm Band and Leonard Bernstein, 1937.”) Celebrations of Bernstein’s 100th birthday are taking place all around the world, including performances of his greatest work: West Side Story in South Africa, Candide in San Francisco and Los Angeles; Fancy Free in Tuscaloosa; and six different operas and theatrical works this summer at Tanglewood, where Bernstein began his career. There’s also a traveling exhibit by the Grammy Museum and, of course, a hashtag campaign (#BernsteinAt100).
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