Jerome Robbins

Jerome Robbins (1918-1998)

Dancer and choreographer. Born in New York, he studied classical and modern ballet and started his career in 1937 as a dancer in musicals, including the Yiddish Art Theater’s The Brothers Ashkenazi. In 1940, he was admitted to the American Ballet Theater (ABT) and eventually became a solo dancer. Later on he became a choreographer, when creating his first choreographic sensation, Fancy Free in 1944, later adapted into a musical called On the Town.
Robbins left ABT in 1948 to join the New York City Ballet under George Balanchine’s artistic management, as a co-artistic director and partner. He created nine choreographies for the company before leaving it in 1959 to start his own company, USA Ballet. In 1969 Robbins rejoined the NYC Ballet and shared the ballet master role with Balanchine.
Robbins visited Israel in 1951 on behalf of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. In 1953, he recommended that Anna Sokolow be invited here to enhance the professionalism of the local Inbal Company. Two years later, he was invited by artistic director Jane Dudley to work with Batsheva, for which he stage two choreographies: Moves (1969), and Afternoon of Faun (1977). Moves, a dance with no soundtrack originally choreographed in 1959 for USA Ballet, was suited for classical ballet dancers. Robbins adapted it to Batsheva’s dancers and enabled them to dance it without pointe shoes.
Over the years, Robbins choreographed for many American musicals, including The King and I (1951), Peter Pan (1954), West Side Story (1957) and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). NYC Ballet still stages a great many of his 66 ballet works, including Dances at a Gathering (1969) and Goldberg Variations (1971).
Robbins served on the National Council on the Arts as well as the New York State Council on the Arts/Dance Panel. He established the Jerome Robbins Film Archive of the Dance Collection of the New York City Public Library at Lincoln Center. Together with Robert Wise, he received the Academy Award for Best Director in 1961 for West Side Story, for which he also received an honorary Academy Award for choreography. Later, he was honored with the Handel Medallion of the City of New York (1976), the Kennedy Center Honors (1981), an honorary membership in the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1985), and the National Medal of the Arts (1988).

Jerome Robbins passed away in 1998.