Voice of My City: Jerome Robbins and New York Educator Guide for Grades 7 and 8, 9-12

How to use the Resource Guide:

The Educator Resource Guide for the exhibit Voice of My City: Robbins and New York is designed in three parts. The first section is intended for use in the classroom prior to a Library visit. It includes historical information and discussion questions to help give students an introduction to the level of influence the city of New York had on Jerome Robbins’ life and choreographic works.

The second section is intended to spark a conversation in the gallery. While a class visit scheduled with the education staff from the Jerome Robbins Dance Division is recommended, this section provides the classroom teacher with enough information to conduct a self-guided visit. Regardless of preference, we ask that you fill out the visit request form prior to your visit: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ozAVh6P1b6Sb5OJD76vmr1OhKa_PIpec6g3Sn89aDcs/edit

Finally, the third section encourages the experimentation of the student. Using the building blocks of Robbins’ choreography, they will be able to work toward the completion of a short movement piece.

______The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 40 Lincoln Center Plaza New York, NY 10023

Introduction:

Jerome Robbins was an inveterate observer, seeker, and creator. In diaries, drawings, watercolors, paintings, story scenarios, poems—and especially in dance—he reimagined the world around him. New York dominated that world, where he was born one-hundred years ago and where he lived his entire adult life. Ideas of New York have long inspired artists but often the city serves as a backdrop in an artwork rather than the basis for plot, theme, and meaning. Robbins put the city at the center of his artistic imaginings. From Fancy Free—his breakout hit ballet in 1944—to the musical West Side Story on stage (1957) and screen (1961) and the ballets N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz (1958) and Glass Pieces (1983), Robbins explored the joys, struggles, grooves, routines, and aspirations of the city and its inhabitants.

Robbins turned to New York as a source of ideas for ballets as a young man, jotting down story lines, moody set pieces, and character descriptions. One passage from the early 1940s is more of a reflection on the city itself than a story idea, more an encapsulation of the pulls and twists and yearnings that the city embodied for him:

My city lies between two rivers – on a small island. My beautiful city is set on rock between two flowing paths of water that run to the sea. My city is tall and jagged – with gold + slated towers. My city is honeycombed with worm tunnels of roads. My city is cut + recut + slashed by hard car filled streets. My city chokes on its breath, and sparkles with its false lights – and sleeps restlessly at night. My city is a lone man walking at night down an empty street watching his shadow grow longer as he passes the last lamp post, seeing no comfort in the blank dark windows, and hearing his footsteps echo against the building + fade away –….

He ends on a proclamation: “Have you heard the voice of my city – the poor voice the lost voice – the voice of people selling + swearing – cursing + vulgar, the shrill + the tough – the wail complaint + the defiance – have you heard the voice of my city fighting + hitting + hurt.” (Jerome Robbins Personal Papers, b.25 f.6) The passage renders the contrasts of the city from beauty to ugliness and throbs with loneliness and pain—and possession. This wounded, contrary place is his.

Robbins navigated fame and anxieties by constant observation and recording—of himself, of others, of the city around him. He added photography and home movies to his sketching and journal writing in the 1950s, even utilizing a dark room in his home to develop film himself. This keen attention to the city became the foundation for some of his most successful creations. He picked up on the anxieties, displacement, and yearning to belong underneath the gloss and proclamations of a modern New York during the era of urban renewal. The focus on youth in all these artworks harkened back to earlier stories of his own, with groups of friends struggling to define themselves. But these artworks also indicated just how far Robbins had come from that beginning—he had risen to the top of the arts, creating a place for himself in the city and the world of dance.

No award recognizes how Robbins made New York itself a source of creative inspiration for dance and theater. That legacy is evident in how Robbins has inspired others—in imaginative re-makings of his dances as well as in new works that carry on his concerns, fusing balletic and everyday movement, connecting ballet and Broadway, or setting a piece on location in New York. But perhaps a more enduring and widespread legacy may be to notice— with all of Robbins’ curiosity and focus—how we walk down a street, imagine an encounter with a stranger, and find our place in the city.

-Julia Foulkes, curator of the exhibit Voice of My City: Jerome Robbins and New York

______The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 40 Lincoln Center Plaza New York, NY 10023

Give me something to dance about, and I’ll dance it

-Jerome Robbins

Before your Library visit:

This is a lesson plan intended to be delivered prior to your visit to the Library to see the exhibit Voice of My City: Jerome Robbins and New York. We encourage you to use the following materials the way that it suits your students, and draw from it conclusions that best supplement your in-class curriculum or afterschool programming. We recognize outcomes we would like to share:

After this pre-lesson participants will be better able to:

 Identify the some of the personal, societal, and environmental factors that influenced the work of Jerome Robbins

 Explain how these influences are reflected in Robbins’ choreographic works

 Contemplate how their identity influences their movement choices

______The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 40 Lincoln Center Plaza New York, NY 10023

Biography

Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz was born in New York on October 11, 1918, into a family of Jewish immigrants and a world reeling from the devastation of a great war. Harry and Lena Rabinowitz, Robbins’ parents, worked in a deli in Manhattan and later moved with two young children across the Hudson River to New Jersey to manage a corset factory. Prodded by an exacting mother, young Jerry followed his older sister’s footsteps in exploring a range of artistic activities, from music to drawing to dance. By the end of high school in 1935, he had not yet devised a career, but he knew that more possibilities lay across the Hudson River.

Robbins ferried to New York to attend college briefly, search for a job in the scarcity of the Great Depression, and immerse himself in the arts. He landed at Gluck Sandor’s Dance Center, where Sandor and his wife, Felicia Sorel, introduced Robbins to modern dance, character acting, and dramatic presentation. Sandor mentored Robbins and offered him his first performance opportunities, nurturing his theatricality alongside technique. It was also in these performances that Robbins experimented with different names, a common practice for Jews in the arts. From “Robin Gerald” to “Jerry Robyns,” he settled on Jerome Robbins by 1938. He performed on Broadway and in variety shows, even choreographing and directing at a summer camp in the Poconos. By the end of the decade, he had found his niche as a dancer for the nascent American ballet company, Ballet Theatre (later renamed American Ballet Theatre).

Robbins danced in roles choreographed by Agnes de Mille, Michel Fokine, and Anthony Tudor—and he looked for a chance to choreograph. The economic depression and growing war served as a galvanizing force to define American ideas of artistry, especially in music, dance, and theater. He wanted to create an American approach to ballet. One way to do this was by topic, so he sketched out stories on struggling artists in the city or a history of New York through dance. He keyed in on the moment of the early 1940s, though, by focusing on sailors on leave in the city, a common sight in the midst of war. Robbins found just the right collaborator in the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein for this ballet idea. Like Robbins, Bernstein was finding a place for himself in the music world by defining an American style. Their collaboration was an opportunity to fuse an American approach to music with one in dance. The result-Fancy Free-debuted on April 18, 1944, and prompted over twenty curtain calls.

Robbins catapulted to fame in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He secured a position as Associate Artistic Director of New York City Ballet in 1949 and choreographed at a prolific pace, ballets such as Age of Anxiety (1950) and Afternoon of a Faun (1953) and musical hits such as The King and I (1951) and Peter Pan (1954). With the musical West Side Story (1957), however, Robbins assembled an enduring vision of New York. Robbins went on to further successes on Broadway—Gypsy (1959), Fiddler on the Roof (1964)—and then left it. The relentlessly collaborative and sometimes stifling process frustrated him; it was “like getting on a subway for three months,” he explained. Robbins created pieces for his own company, Ballets: U.S.A., which traveled throughout Europe in the late 1950s and early 1960s to widespread acclaim. The global reach of the film West Side Story soon followed, spreading Robbins’ visions of New York around the world.

In the 1980s, Robbins emerged from this intensive introspection to look anew at the city around him. He saw a city hurt in new ways, ravaged by a little-understood epidemic that was killing gay men in disproportionate numbers. He wrestled with his own aging and the prospect of death, as well as the mounting loss of others. And he questioned whether his creativity had dried up. But he did not stop working. He engaged in advocacy for HIV/AIDS research and care, devoted even more of his own resources to dance preservation, and again created ballets that referenced the city directly, particularly the vivacious Glass Pieces (1983). After that ballet’s debut, a friend wrote Robbins of the experience of crossing 57th St.: “I was in your ballet.”

Legacies loomed over Robbins throughout his life. He dissected the inheritances of family and traditions, revered artists and artworks of previous eras, and, from an early age, pondered what his own legacies might be. His attention to preserving his own records and those of others in his generous donations to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts is a testament to his belief in bequests. He spent the final years of his life demarcating legacies, such as the care he gave to a friend dying of AIDS and collecting together the dances of his musicals in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway (1989). Recognition of his enduring accomplishments abounded. He received the National Medal of Arts in 1988; New York City Ballet held “A Festival of Jerome Robbins Ballets” in 1990. He died on July 29, 1998, in his home. –J. Foulkes

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Identity i·den·ti·ty ˌīˈden(t)ədē/ noun

1. the fact of being who or what a person or thing is. a close similarity or affinity 2. a close similarity or affinity

The following section discusses the qualities that Robbins possessed because of ethnicity, the time, and the location in which he was born, or was endowed with later in life because of circumstance. It also discusses affinities that he aligned himself to, including New York City, that shaped him into the choreographic genius we celebrate today.

Judaism

For Educators:

The Rabinowitzes were ethnically Jewish. Like many American Jews, they conformed to traditional beliefs, and celebrated Christmas. Robbins did the same until after his bar mitzvah, when assimilation became a priority. Being American, which at the time meant appearing more Anglo-Saxon, led to changing his name from “Rabinowitz” to “Robbins,” on playbills, and then legally. Robbins said, “I never wanted to be a Jew. I didn’t want to be like my father . . . I wanted to be safe, protected, assimilated”(Vaill, 361). However, several times throughout his life, Robbins immersed himself in projects that directly related to his heritage, including the musical Fiddler On the Roof. He studied the “bottle dance,” at Jewish weddings in the transplanted enclaves in Brooklyn, that would ultimately be the showstopper of the production. On opening night of Fiddler, his father wept with gratitude at seeing the village that he had not visited since he was a young man, recreated on stage. The creation of the musical would lead to more material exploring Robbins’ original faith, and repair a lukewarm relationship with his father.

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Family

The Family Robbins Was Born Into (Harry, Lena, and Sonia Rabinowitz):

For Educators:

Robbins’ father Herschel (Harry) Rabinowitz was born in a village called Ró‎żanka in Eastern Europe. Robbins’ grandfather was the baker of the small town, and Herschel was one son in a family with four sons and one daughter. The village is now part of Poland, but in 1888, when Herschel was born, it was part of Russia. Following tradition, the daughters learned how to keep the home from their mother, and the sons were conscripted into the Russian Army. This conscription could be a death sentence, as Jewish men were considered expendable, and therefore put on the front lines. In order to avoid this fate, Herschel’s father and mother faked his death, and he escaped in the middle of the night until he reached a friendly port, and sailed to New York City.

Lena (Rips) Rabinowitz was one of seven children, one son and six daughters. She had a different background from Harry, in that she was formally educated, specifically at a women’s college in Des Moines, IA for two years. Her parents also were more elite than his parents, and were staid members of Jersey City, New Jersey Jewish society.

The feminine influence in Robbins’ life was strong, beginning with the aunts that visited often, and some that lived in close proximity. Another strong female influence was Robbins’ older sister Sonia. Independent where Robbins was introverted, Sonia began taking dance lessons and performing at the age of four, traveling on the ferry from Weehawken, New Jersey to Manhattan to study with Alys Bentley at a young age. Sonia would remain a lifelong friend and confidant for Robbins, although it was sometimes a conflicted relationship.

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The Families Robbins Created

“My favorite times were the accidental occasions on which we’d gather at Jane[Bowles]’s late at night. . .Somehow we’d all be lying on Jane’s huge bed, like at a picnic or on the beach. And we’d talk. Those evenings I felt as if Jane’s bed became some special raft on which we all floated off, lolling, resting, talking, being silent but so easily in each others’ presence.” –Jerome Robbins (Vaill, 121)

For Educators:

Robbins began to widen his social circle outside of extended family when he took his first paid position as a dancer at the summer resort, Tamiment, located in the Poconos. He collaborated with actors and actresses including Imogene Coca, Danny Kaye, and Carol Channing, often rehearsing a show for a full day before performing it at night. They tried out new material, honing their craft, all the time using the audience’s gaiety or dead silence as the gauge for what worked and what didn’t.

In 1945, Robbins moved to 24 West Tenth Street. Friends Oliver Smith, set designer for Fancy Free, and later West Side Story, and Paul Bowles and his wife Jane lived at number 28, and Leonard Bernstein lived at number 30. Adolph Green, the lyrist for On the Town, and the critic and poet Edwin Denby stopped by from time to time. The tenants spent time collaborating, playing word games, and playing music, all the genesis for future projects. Many times, they didn’t bother using the front door to go from one place to the other; crossing the roofs and traversing fire escapes to reach their destination.

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Bisexuality

For Educators:

Throughout his life, Robbins had romantic relationships with both men and women. Robbins saw therapists who insisted that they could “cure” him of being gay, which only lead to more secrecy and self-doubt. During most of Robbins’ early career it was illegal to be gay in every state of the United States, and he had to keep his sexual preference a secret, lest he lose his job, or not get hired in the first place. In his later years, he grew more confident, outwardly expressing affection to same-sex partners instead of keeping his thoughts in his private journal.

In 1985, the number of AIDS patients in the United States reached 10,000. In 1989, a former lover of Robbins became ill with the disease and Robbins cared for him until his death. This close proximity to AIDS, and the acknowledgement of lack of money for healthcare and overall financial support of those who were afflicted led to Robbins’ activism in the 1980s and 1990s. Robbins spearheaded benefits including “Dancing for Life,” a dance concert to raise money and awareness for the epidemic.

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Perceived Lack of Acceptance

“I feel the veneer will come off & all will know I’m a fake & a fraud—untalented, unliked, & that the time of success will be over.”-Jerome Robbins (Vaill, 114)

Self-doubt and imposter syndrome, through the lens of Age of Anxiety

For Educators:

In 1950, six years after his blockbuster, Fancy Free, came the ballet Age of Anxiety. Robbins took on the heavy mantle of changing the direction of American ballet with Fancy Free, only allowing himself a brief moment of happiness brought on by success before the panic to produce with equal gravitas returned. Age of Anxiety was based on a book-length poem by W.H. Auden, about four men returning to their lives after a war. Leonard Bernstein had used it as inspiration for a symphony, and the music and the text in turn was the basis for creating the choreography. Robbins worked hard to turn the poem into a ballet. It was lengthy and complex, and it took a lot of work to wrench the material into a performance piece. He worked on it diligently, possibly in order to prove himself to his colleagues.

Throughout Robbins’ life, he felt inadequate in several areas including the lack of a formal education (Bernstein was Harvard-educated), the fear of being alone, feeling alienated from his family, and the fear of aging. There were also real threats that were not just in his mind but increased his paranoia, including the possibility of being outed as gay, and physically being followed by the FBI during the height of the McCarthy Era. His inner and outer turmoil led to physical symptoms, and even led to literally flying miles away from a bad performance or a badly-reviewed out of town tryout, with no assurance that he would return.

The concept of hiding and/or revealing one’s true identity is a theme throughout his ballets, beginning with Age of Anxiety, and seen also in the Noh-inspired Watermill. In Age, the dancers’ true selves are revealed at the end when they remove their masks. Robbins manufactures their happy ending when the male dancer whisks the female dancer offstage, presumably to a place of acceptance they create for themselves. This is a staged example of the relief and acceptance that he craved, that was available to him, but he never fully allowed himself to feel.

Immigration and assimilation, through the lens of West Side Story

Robbins’ wrestle with assimilation began when his parents gave him the middle name “Wilson” after Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States. At this time the demographics within the United States highly favored white Western Europeans, and when the term “American” was used, their cultural traditions appeared to be the status that many times other races or ethnicities attempted to aspire to. Thus, the entire Robbins family began hiding their Jewishness from their identities in small steps, culminating with the entire family changing their names from “Rabinowitz” to “Robbins.”(This can also be attributed to wanting to be associated with their famous son.) Working on musicals like West Side Story, and Fiddler on the Roof surfaced inherent traits that had been travelling with Robbins all along: that he was the son of immigrants, and the ability to create a better future for the next generation, while paying homage to the past, were what made one an American, not the status quo.

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Other Influences

Petrouchka

“He was a wonderful dancer, wonderful. “He had good technique and beautiful feet.”

–Barbara Milberg, corps member and soloist with Robbins (Vaill, 157)

For Educators:

Robbins became enchanted by the ballet Petrouchka in 1936 when he saw his sister Sonia dance in a production of the Stravinsky classic. He was so taken by the story that he recreated the ballet with puppets and scenery that he created himself. Thus began his fascination with staging, a foreshadowing of his choreographic career.

In 1936, Robbins was eighteen and looking for what would be his lifelong direction. He thought he might be interested in puppetry, but when he asked the puppeteer Tony Sarg to take him on as an apprentice, Sarg turned him down. Robbins decided, why not embody the character himself through dancing? He would go on to play the role of Petrouchka with impresario Gluck Sandor’s troupe, and in the early days of Ballet Theatre, when the repertoire consisted of favorites from the Ballet Russes, dances from American choreographers including Agnes De Mille, and British choreographers such as Anthony Tudor.

Petrouchka resonated with Robbins because he identified with the “sad clown” aspects of the character. He used personal heartbreak to help him identify with a character, who in the plot, was imprisoned as a result of professing his feelings for his unrequited love. While this character development technique, eventually known as “method acting,” had been used in the theater since the early 20th century, Robbins’ innovation was to apply this process to dance to create a more nuanced performance. The body and the mind worked together, and the result was felt intensely by his audiences.

He also felt deeply connected to the man who originated the role of Petrouchka, Vaslav Nijinsky, who outwardly projected the façade of an effortless performer, but privately suffered from schizophrenia.

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House Un-American Activities Committee

“Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” - J. Parnell Thomas

For Educators:

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties (Credit: Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project). By 1947, the investigations turned toward the entertainment industry. Jerome Robbins had attended several meetings of the Communist Party from 1943 to 1947. He joined because of the assumption that the Party would protect working artists, and that there was power in numbers when it came to advocating for fair wages and safety policies. He found, however, that the Communist Party “was less committed to ‘working for minorities’ “(Vaill, 159). Television talk show host Ed Sullivan, who was an FBI and HUAC informant, gave Robbins an ultimatum: Give up friends and acquaintances who were also members of the Communist Party, or Sullivan would ruin his career by outing his party affiliation and his sexual orientation.

Robbins believed that the FBI followed him throughout world excursions during the 1950s. In order to rid himself of a threat of imprisonment, he had to go on record, telling the Committee names of other people in the entertainment industry that he had suspected were members of the Communist Party. Some colleagues continued to work with him after being named, but many never forgave him for doing so.

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Balanchine/American Style

[Robbins choreography had] “a special American look, a kind of looseness and ease—a special kid of running, like ballplayers. Jerry captured that.”-Sono Osato (Vaill, 96)

For Educators:

Robbins never formally studied ballet with Balanchine or at the School of American Ballet. He did not have the money to attend classes, and when he asked for a scholarship, he was turned down by one of the School’s administrators. He credits this rejection as the reason why the two men had their own unique choreographic strengths. Robbins mainly received his ballet education while performing for Gluck Sandor, the various choreographers at Ballet Theatre, and from fellow dancers.

The careers of George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins overlapped at brief moments during the first part of Robbins’ professional life. Only at a chance meeting did the two men have an opportunity to discuss their theories of dancing and choreography. Balanchine had a new theory about ballet that later Robbins would reiterate succinctly: NO STORIES. The dancing itself would be the story in order to create a new kind of ballet for American audiences. Robbins would return to and expand on this theory for the rest of his career.

Balanchine had created this new blueprint, but within it, the styles of Robbins and Balanchine could be distinct and still be thought of as American ballet. Both Balanchine and Robbins’ ballets were shorn up by rigorous classical technique. Where they diverged was Robbins’ combination of traditional steps with vernacular movement. When he employed traditional narrative, the scenarios were truly representative of American culture.

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Music

For Educators:

There are several instances in Robbins’ life where music is a driving force in creating a new work, or examples where the movement and the music carry equal importance in the choreographic work. The following are some examples of favorite composers who weave a thread through Robbins’ life beginning with his earliest recollections, and composers he worked with personally to elongate phrases, increase tempo, or instrumentally accentuate choreography. He trained in piano and violin as a young boy and continued his musical education informally throughout his life. Some of the edits on musical scores in the Robbins and Bernstein archival collections were made by Robbins’ own hand.

“Chopin is fierce. He knew a lot. . . He’s rough & painful & loving. He is full of stabbing notes & kissing notes. He repeats & repeats endlessly-- & you’ve got to be ready to be dragged over the corrosive landscape again & again.”- Jerome Robbins (Vaill, 405,406)

Chopin:

Lena Rabinowitz introduced her children to drama, art, dance, and music. Sonia and Jerome listened and danced to the family’s Frédéric Chopin records from early childhood. Chopin was the inspiration for the ballet The Concert: Or, The Perils of Everybody, which combined Robbins’ improvisation with Chopin from an early age. He chose Chopin as the music for the work that would mark his return to the New York City Ballet after his 15 plus year hiatus: Dances at a Gathering. Dances is a reminiscence. Robbins was remembering his childhood relationship to Chopin, but in opposition to The Concert, the dancers are not telling a story complete with characters and a plot; the dancers’ movements are the story. In all, Robbins would choreograph four Chopin ballets.

Bernstein

For Educators: Fancy Free, the first collaboration between Bernstein and Robbins was born from a new generation of artists, ready to make their mark, and compelled to create material that reflected their lives as young Americans. Fancy Free almost didn’t happen, however. As Robbins and Bernstein embarked on creating 30 minutes of dancing and music that would forever change Robbins’ career, Bernstein, then the assistant conductor at the New York Philharmonic, rocketed to stardom when the guest conductor Bruno Walter became ill and with very little preparation, Bernstein had to lead the orchestra in his place. Whereas prior to his New York Philharmonic debut, Bernstein was piecing work together and had time to devote to the music for Fancy Free, now he was inundated with engagements. The letter above is meant to soothe a stressed Robbins, who was being given his one (and maybe only) shot choreographing for Ballet Theatre with this ballet. Fancy Free opened on April 18, 1944 to thunderous applause.

The success of Fancy Free allowed both artists to be more discerning when it came to choosing projects. They could take the time to create, which is what happened in the following years with their most famous partnership, West Side Story. This musical now known the world over, and for which American audiences is part of our collective consciousness was approximately 10 years in the making. Bernstein’s score walks the tightrope between the light, amusing, and hopeful qualities of the strings, and the strong brass signifying danger, an orchestral picture of the streets of New York City in the late 1950s. Most importantly, the score prized silence. The silence in the score gave Robbins a canvas on which he could add finger-snaps, whistles, and catcalls. Accompanying choreography included arms moving out to second position and balletic fights.

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For a 65th birthday celebration, Robbins wrote, “Collaborating with Lenny, [had been] fun, wildly exciting, depressing, angry-making, exhausting, touching. . . It was always one of the best moments in doing a show.” He wrote to Bernstein’s children at the time of his death, “I felt a big piece of my life’s construction had dropped away” (Vaill, 516).

Robert Prince

For Educators: In the late 50s, after working on West Side Story, Robbins had trouble returning to the formalized style and classical music of the New York City Ballet. Struggling against the conformity, he leapt at an invitation to assemble a group of multi-ethnic, young dancers and take them to a new festival in Spoleto, Italy. He called the group Ballets: U.S.A., reflecting the diverse group of dancers that made it through his usually rigorous audition process. His mind was full of the jazz-based score from West Side Story, and could only look forward to similar themes. Robert Prince’s score for N. Y. Export: Opus Jazz was the foundation for Robbins’ “sneaker ballet,“ and the music gave Robbins the freedom to include choreography with Beat sensibilities, and elements of the jitterbug, but strong enough in classic structure that it could still be considered a ballet.

Phillip Glass

For Educators:

Glass Pieces ushered in a new era of musical composition at New York City Ballet. Traditionally, the ballets had been choreographed to composers like Stravinsky, someone who represented the modern era of the early to mid- 20th century. Composer Phillip Glass’ orchestrations were composed in the 1980s. Because of his music’s minimalist and repetitive qualities, the choreography, costumes, and set could be complimentary, and indicative of postmodern era. Dancers danced as if they were trying to make their trains at Grand Central Station, or repeated movement themes while propelling their bodies forward.

The controlled chaos of the first movement could be a metaphor for the turbulence in Robbins’ life during this time. Dancers walk in designated paths, and then break from the conformity, all at once twirling, stopping to lunge, or to move out of the way of another dancer. Robbins had lost his colleague, George Balanchine, just days before the opening of Glass Pieces, and he was asked to share the role of ballet master of New York City Ballet with the younger Peter Martins, who came from the company rather than in an established artistic or directorial role. This caused Robbins a great amount of angst and introspection. Regardless of the circumstances, Glass Pieces illustrated that Robbins understood Balanchine’s greatest gift to American ballet: casting off the old world for the new.

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Manhattan

Jerome Robbins Addresses Throughout the City and New Jersey:

Weehawken (1921-1940)

Robbins lived here as a young child, taking the ferry across the Hudson River to dance and music classes, and then later auditions and performances. The city view atop the hill were the home still sits today, was a constant reminder of a bigger world beyond the small town.

Then Now

Sixth Ave. and 31st St. [facsimile] Silver gelatin print c. 1939 Wurts Bros.

Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

 873 6th Avenue (1940-1945): Robbins rented this space while he was auditioning in New York City, in the chorus of musical theater productions, touring with Ballet Theatre, and creating the ballet Fancy Free.

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Then Now

Studios, 51 West Tenth Street, Manhattan Silver gelatin print 1938 Berenice Abbott

Photography Collection, NYPL.

 24 W. 10th Street (1945-1946) Robbins lived here with other young artists yearning to make their mark on the New York music and theater scene. While each person who lived in this building (Robbins on the 5th floor of #24, Oliver Smith the scenic designer in #28, and Leonard Bernstein in #32), had had several success, they were still new in their fame and careers. They gathered nightly for games, food and informal collaboration. As Robbins puts it, “We didn’t know who we were then”(Vaill, 117).

Then Now Photo credit: Jerome Robbins

 Park Avenue and 55th Streets (1946-1960s) Robbins rented an apartment in this building that had been previously occupied by the photographer George Platt Lynes. The apartment contained a dark room that Robbins used, developing the photos he took as research for West Side Story, and a disappearing New York, that was demolished to make way for urban renewal. Robbins took the photograph on the left.

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Now

 117 East 81st Street (1967-1998) Robbins purchased this home in the late 60s, after the success of several Broadway shows. This is the house that would be his home for the rest of his life. The house contained offices on the first floor, living spaces, and a studio on the top floor where Robbins practiced his barre exercises nearly every day. Even though Robbins continued to travel for extended periods of time in the United States and abroad, this home was his sanctuary after many years of renting places due to lack of funds, touring as a dancer, and travel for other professional engagements. “I was nevertheless overwhelmed by Jerry’s place: five floors of beautiful objects of the greatest variety. And wonderful books, dozens, for example, of the Skira volumes.”(William James Earle from his blog post “Fond Reminiscences of Jerome Robbins”).

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For Students:

Discussion questions: 1. What activities do you do to you to make yourself feel more connected to friends and classmates?

How could dance allow you to feel more connected to others?

2. What country does your family originate from? Are you a first–generation American? Has your family been in the United States for several generations? How has knowing your family origins affected your life experiences? Do you use these facts about yourself to shape your choreography? How? Share with a partner, and then share out with the larger group.

3. What is your favorite music? When it is played, how does it make you feel? What memories does it evoke?

4. Have you always lived in New York City? Where throughout the city have you lived? Compare your experience with a student that has lived in the same neighborhood since they were born. What are the similarities and differences in each experience?

5. Robbins used New York City as inspiration for his dances. Where do you get your inspiration from when dancing or choreographing?

Activity:

View a performance of a Robbins ballet. If possible, attend a live performance with students. Robbins’ ballets can be checked out from the New York Public Library with a valid library card. Some examples include: Afternoon of a Faun: NYPL Call no: DVD 793.3 A, N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz: Available on Kanopy.com with a valid library card (Note: many performance selections are within other DVD compilations)

Create a short dance piece, no more than two minutes, with a partner using the word “belonging” as the

theme. There must be a least three points of contact within the piece. Perform this piece for your classmates.

Reflect After each performance, classmates can use either the Laban Movement Analysis chart or the movement symbol cards to describe the movements they saw, and also where they would add a movement element to create a more complete composition.

______The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 40 Lincoln Center Plaza New York, NY 10023

Library Visit:

This is a lesson plan intended to be delivered in the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery, Shelby Cullom Davis Museum, on the Plaza level of the Library, where the Voice of My City: Jerome Robbins and New York exhibit is located. The focus of this educational experience is the archival objects that are on display, and they are the foundation for the following discussion prompts. We encourage the use of the following materials as a teacher-led classroom experience but recommend scheduling an educational experience led by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division staff. The material can also be used in the classroom to illustrate how Robbins used New York City as inspiration for his ballets and musicals. We recognize a few outcomes we would like to share:

After this gallery facilitation participants will be better able to:

 Identify opposing emotional characteristics within work based on Robbins’ relationship with New York City

 Recognize Robbins’ cultivation of research in order to express New Yorkers’ relationship to their city through dance

 Explore Robbins’ relationship between dance and other art forms including drawing, poetry, music, and photography

 Deftly discuss the legacy of Robbins choreography in American dance forms.

______The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 40 Lincoln Center Plaza New York, NY 10023

In the Oenslager Gallery:

This educational experience is intended to last between 1.5 hours and 2 hours. Here are some supplies you will need that can be provided by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division:

 Pencils (enough for group)  Notecards or Post-its (enough for group)  Optional: large pieces of post-it paper

Please only use pencil in the galleries.

5 minutes Ask Who was Jerome Robbins? Why are we touring this exhibit?

Answer Jerome Robbins was a dancer and choreographer for Ballet Theatre (now American Ballet Theatre) and New York City Ballet. He directed and choreographed musicals on Broadway including Gypsy, Fiddler on the Roof, and West Side Story. We are viewing this exhibit because 2018 is his centennial year. He was born on October 11, 1918, and lived his entire adult life in New York City. This exhibit tells the story of his feelings toward New York City, both good and bad, and how these feelings influence his choreographic works.

Hand out Pencils and notecards

5 minutes Ask students to write down one word that they would use to describe New York City, or one word that describes their feelings about being a New Yorker, or an experience that is distinctly “New York”

Ask them to hold onto it for an activity happening later in the gallery.

10 minutes Ask the students to enter the exhibit and look at the Readexhibit The to passage get a first “The impression. Voice of My Gather City,” at written the entr byance Jerome

Robbinsto discuss on theany firstnew panel insights of thefrom exhibit the students’ (or ask a first student to read impressions. aloud.)

Ask students to comment briefly about the passage

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15 minutes Ask the students to enter the exhibit and look at the exhibit to get a first impression. Gather at the entrance to discuss any new insights from the students’ first impressions.

Choose 3 stops that best illustrate the life of Jerome Robbins. For this experience we have 20 chosen: minutes A photo of Jerome and his father Herschel (Harry) in front of the family- th owned delicatessen on east 97 Street. Robbins’ real last name was Rabinowitz. The Rabinowitz’s were ethnically Jewish and, like many

Location: Section #1 American Jews, conformed to traditional beliefs, and celebrated Christmas. Robbins did the same until after his bar mitzvah, when

assimilation became a priority. Robbins struggled his entire life to reconcile his wish to be “American” which to him meant less Jewish

sounding and appearing, and adhering to cultural and familial traditions. He was able to make peace with these feelings while working on Fiddler on the Roof. The village where it takes place is nearly identical to his

father’s ancestral home.

A photo of Jerome Robbins dancing in the ballet Fancy Free in 1944. It is about 3 sailors on shore leave one night at a bar in New York City.

Robbins admired and respected the European choreographers that had come before him, but was aware that he and his contemporaries were growing up in a different era. When given the chance to choreograph for Location: Section #2 Ballet Theatre, he jumped at the chance but also knew this was the time to do something radically different. Robbins asked, “Why can‘t we dance about American subjects? Why can’t we talk about the way we dance today and how we are?” Fancy Free was just that. It incorporated vernacular movement with balletic steps and grace. At the premiere, it

was so popular that the dancers took 22 curtain calls. The audience was sure they had never seen this type of performance before, but were wrong: they saw elements of the sailor’s movements every day as

residents of New York City.

The masks for the ballet Age of Anxiety, choreographed and performed in 1950. It was based on a poem of the same name and was a metaphor for several insecurities and preoccupations Robbins was being confronted Location: Section #3 with at the time, including feeling less educated than his colleagues, afraid of being outed as gay, not feeling “American (read: white)” enough, and being investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee because of his one-time Communist leanings. Robbins begins to play with the concept of a “somewhere,” that will show up again, most prominently in West Side Story. It is an imagined place where one can be oneself and unconditionally accepted.

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Activity

25 minutes

Gather in the largest area of the gallery for the activity

 Ask the students to take out their notecard with one word that describes their feelings about New York City.

 Ask students to pair up with another student that has a similar word or sentiment on their note card

 Ask the students to place their card(s) under or near an object that represents this feeling or thought about New York

 When they are finished, take a gallery tour with the group and discuss each student or groups’ choice

 Gather the students in the largest place in the gallery, and give the students time to reflect on the activity. Use the following questions for discussion prompts:

o What are some of the similarities you observed between your feelings about New York City and how Robbins’ felt about his hometown?

o What are some ways that you can use elements of your identity to create choreography?

o Are insecurities and negativity as valid a subject matter for choreography as

positive feelings and happiness, why or why not? What would you prefer to use as inspiration? Why or why not?

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Legacy 20 Take the students to the 2nd floor to view sections of Justin Peck’s The Times are Racing minutes and NY Export: Opus Jazz, Robbins’ choreography reimagined in 2010.

You Tube: Jazz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GGa6xXJfTo

Racing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj0nltZOf50

(NY Export: Opus Jazz is also available for check out at NYPL with accompanying curriculum)

The students should view the pieces a couple times, time permitting. Use the following prompts to begin the conversation surrounding the students’ observations:

Environment-Where are they dancing?

Opus Jazz: diner, city streets, alleyways

The Times are Racing: Subway station

Dance Styles- What dance styles are being observed?

Opus Jazz: ballet, 50s inspired movements including the jitterbug, vernacular movement (the movement by ordinary people in a particular location or region)

The Times are Racing: ballet, tap, vernacular movement

 Specify examples of vernacular movement

Clothing- What are they wearing?

Opus Jazz: Street clothes, sneakers

The Times are Racing: sneakers with taps, street clothes with stylized elements including matching jackets on male dancers

Music- What do you hear?

Opus Jazz: Jazz-like score by Robert Prince

The Times are Racing: orchestral music with electronic elements by Dan Deacon

Ask: Why would the choreographers use New York locations in which to dance? Could you recreate this feeling on stage without the actual location to give context? What moves would you retain to keep the “New York feel”? What direct links do you observe between Robbins’ choreography, and contemporary choreographers?

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5 minutes Conclusion

Repeat the first exercise

Ask the students to write down one word that they would use to describe New York City, or one word that describes their feelings about being a New Yorker , or an experience that is distinctly “New York” Ask whether their answer has changed after viewing the exhibit, or thinking more about New York as inspiration for choreography. Discuss the changes or whether their answers remained the same.

______The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 40 Lincoln Center Plaza New York, NY 10023

After your Library visit:

This is a lesson plan intended to be delivered after your visit to the Library. This plan focuses on the completion of the Dance Legacy Framework Chart prepared by Tina Curran, using the information discussed, and questions asked for students to ponder in the first two sections. Students will also work on an activity together to create a complex ballet scenario, and then turn their work into a performance piece, an embodiment of the material they have been presented within the first two sections.

After this lesson participants will be better able to:

 Systematically record the through-line from Robbins’ identity, to his signature choreography, and finally his contemporaries

 Craft a complex scenario, which can be turned into a movement piece, using Robbins’ ballet scenarios as inspiration

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Mo Technique/ Ballet Philosophy: Creative/Artistic

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Reflection Exercise Dance Legacy Framework Chart as created by Tina Curran with elements about Robbins’ history filled in. Use the prompts to fill in the chart with your students, based on what they learned during their visit to the exhibit.

______The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 40 Lincoln Center Plaza New York, NY 10023

Activity for Kinesthetic Learning

Crafting Scenarios

Scenario: a written outline of a movie, novel, or stage work giving details of the plot and individual scenes

Jerome Robbins wrote new scenarios for ballets constantly in his youth that were full of themes and ideas that had never before been expressed in ballet. Using everyday events as inspiration, he reexamined traditional storytelling in ballet. He created contemporary plots rooted in an American urban reality using vernacular movement.

Task: Create a movement piece using the following elements of dance that increase in complexity based on student answers, and Robbins’ scenarios as inspiration.

The following elements are the building blocks of a Robbins ballet or musical scenario

 Environment  Dance Styles  Clothing/Costume  Music  Vernacular Movement

Instructions:

1. Divide your students into groups of five 2. Read and discuss the provided Robbins’ scenarios for ballets 3. Hand out the following worksheet(the last page, past the scenarios) 4. Ask students to choose the first element square they will fill out within their group 5. Pass the paper to the right. This student will fill in the square using the element from the previous student to increase complexity. See example: 6. Create a dance using at least three of the elemental building blocks

Environment: Environment: Environment: Environment: Environment: (student 5) (student 1) (student 2) (student 3) (student 4) The last car on the subway, The subway The last car on the The last car on the The last car on the and I’m the only passenger subway subway, and I’m the subway, and I’m the until a birthday party gets only passenger only passenger until a on with a band birthday party gets on.

7. Share results with the class 8. Reflect using either the Laban Movement Analysis chart or the movement symbol cards to describe the movements they saw, and also where they would add a movement element to create a more complete composition.

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Examples of Robbins’ Ballet Scenarios

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Scenario Elements

Environment Music Vernacular Movement

Dance Style Clothing/Costume

______The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 40 Lincoln Center Plaza New York, NY 10023

Many of the images in the Educator Resource Guide can be viewed wither on line at digitalcollections.nypl.org, or at the Library on the 3rd floor in Special Collections.

Cover photo: Photo shoot of original Fancy Free cast in Times Square Silver gelatin print November 4, 1958 Photographer unknown Jerome Robbins Dance Division

How to use the resource guide Photo shoot of original Fancy Free cast in Times Square Silver gelatin print November 4, 1958 Photographer unknown Jerome Robbins Dance Division

Before your Library visit:

Jerome Robbins dancing in his living room Silver gelatin print 1959 Photo by Philippe Halsman © Halsman Archive Jerome Robbins Dance Division

Judaism: Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. "Bottle dance scene from Fiddler on the Roof" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1976. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/9f54d2c0-64cf-be0a-e040-e00a18063192

Family: Lena, Harry, Sonia, and Jerome Rabinowitz (Robbins) in Weehawken, New Jersey Silver gelatin print c. 1920s Photographer unknown Jerome Robbins Dance Division

Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. "Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green in rehearsal for the stage production On the Town" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1943. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/764e9d69-1f96-65fd-e040-e00a1806203d

Bisexuality: Dancing for Life poster Print 198 Robert Rauschenberg Jerome Robbins Dance Division

Perceived Lack of Acceptance: Photo in mirror [facsimile] Silver gelatin print c. 1970s Jerome Robbins Courtesy Jerome Robbins Foundation

“Behind New York’s Facade: Slums and Segregation, ” Look magazine Newsprint February 18, 1958 Courtesy Julia Foulkes

House Un-American Activities Committee: Jerome Robbins testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee [facsimile] Silver gelatin print May 5, 1953 Jacob Harris Courtesy AP Images

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Petrouchka: Petrouchka Watercolor, graphite, and pastel c. 1930s Jerome Robbins Jerome Robbins Dance Division

Petrouchka Ink c. 1970s Jerome Robbins Jerome Robbins Dance Division

Balanchine/American Style:

Ballet - NY City history Ink c. 1938-1940 Jerome Robbins Jerome Robbins Dance Division

Music: Costume sketches for Dances at a Gathering Watercolor on paper 1969 Joe Eula Jerome Robbins Dance Division

Letter from Leonard Bernstein to Jerome Robbins Graphite c. 1943 Leonard Bernstein Jerome Robbins Dance Division

Ballets: U.S.A. in Opus Jazz Silver gelatin print 1958 Photographer unknown Jerome Robbins Dance Division

New York City Ballet in Jerome Robbins’ Glass Pieces, photos by Paul Kolnik

New York City Ballet performing “Glass Pieces” in its spring gala at the David H. Koch Theater. Credit Andrea Mohin/The New York Times.

Manhattan: (“Now” images courtesy of Google maps

Weehawken house Graphite c. 1930s Jerome Robbins

Weehawken house Graphite and watercolor c. 1930s Jerome Robbins

Sixth Ave. and 31st St. [facsimile] Silver gelatin print c. 1939 Wurts Bros.

Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

Studios, 51 West Tenth Street, Manhattan Silver gelatin print 1938 Berenice Abbott Photography Collection, NYPL.

After Your Library Visit:

Designs by Irene Sharaff Jerome Robbins Dance Division

______The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 40 Lincoln Center Plaza New York, NY 10023

Library Visit:

Photo credit: Jerome Robbins

Object Section: Herschel Rabinowitz in front of his delicatessen at 1403 Madison Avenue Silver gelatin print c. 1910s Photographer unknown Jerome Robbins Dance Division

Jerome Robbins in Fancy Free Silver gelatin print c. 1944 Photographer unknown Jerome Robbins Dance Division

Masks for Age of anxiety Wire mesh and fabric c. 1950 Irene Sharaff Jerome Robbins Dance Division

Examples of Robbins’ Ballet Scenarios: . . . like a little town Ink and graphite on typescript c. 1940s Jerome Robbins

A story of four young people caught in the struggle Typescript c. 1940s Jerome Robbins

Negro Ballet: South and North Graphite and typescript c. 1940s Jerome Robbins

War Babies Graphite on typescript c. 1940s Jerome Robbins Jerome Robbins Dance Division

Label copy provided for this guide and the exhibit by Voice of My City: Jerome Robbins and New York curator Julia Foulkes. This material is not to be reproduced without permission by the author.

______The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 40 Lincoln Center Plaza New York, NY 10023

Sources:

Curran, Tina, Dance Legacy Framework.

Foulkes, Julia. A Place for Us, West Side Story and New York, University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About, directed by Judy Kinberg, written by Amanda Vaill(2008; Long Branch, NY: Kulture), DVD.

Jowitt, Deborah. Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance, Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2004.

Vaill, Amanda, Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins, Broadway Books, 2006.

Co nnections to the New York City Department of Education Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in Dance:

 3 of 5 Strands of Learning in Dance

Dance Making

Making Connections

Working with Community and Cultural Resources

th th  Can be used as material to reach the 8 and the 12 Grade Benchmark

This guide also fulfills New York State Arts Standards in Dance including 7, 8, and High School benchmarks in

Creating, Responding, and Connecting

This exhibition is made possible by the generous support of Jody and John Arnhold; Baker Tilly Virchow Krause, LLP; Mikhail Baryshnikov*; Edward Brill and Michele Levin; The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation; William J. Earle*; Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz; Michael Gabay; Pat and Alex Gabay; Perry and Marty Granoff; Allen Greenberg*; The Frederick Loewe Foundation, Inc.*; Morgan Stanley; Marie Nugent-Head; Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation; Chris Pennington*; Michèle and Steve Pesner; The Jerome Robbins Foundation, Inc.; Meryl S. Rosofsky and Stuart H. Coleman*; Robert A. Schulman*; Randi Schuster; Leo Shull Foundation for the Arts; Barbara J. Slifka*; Ellen Sorrin*; Michael and Susanna Steinberg*; The Geraldine Stutz Trust; William Morris Endeavor; and an anonymous donor. *in loving memory of Aidan Mooney

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts gratefully acknowledges the support of Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman. Additional support for exhibitions has been provided by Judy R. and Alfred A. Rosenberg and the Miriam and Harold Steinberg Foundation.

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