Reading 9

The following passage is adapted from an article by Pia Catton titled “Dancing American” that first appeared in Humanities magazine (© 2009 Pia Catton).

1. The premiere of Fancy Free, on
2. April 18, 1944, catapulted twenty-
3. five-year-old choreographer
4. Jerome Robbins to stardom. He
5. had created a category-defying
6. ballet drawn from real American
7. life: wartime New York was
8. teeming with young men in
9. uniform and gals in swishy dresses.
10. He wasn’t the first choreographer
11. to find inspiration in the common
12. man, but he was at the red-hot
13. center of a new approach to dance.
14. From ballet to the musical theater,
15. choreographers on these shores
16. were creating works that did not
17. always look to the past, but instead
18. to the present and future.
19. Fancy Free did not appear out of
20. thin air. Robbins created it while
21. employed as a dancer in the
22. touring Ballet Theatre, which had
23. been founded in 1940 and was
24. fertile ground for stage artists.
25. Though the company presented
26. classical ballets, it encouraged new
27. work. Soon though, Ballet Theatre,
28. suffering from financial trouble,
29. brought in a Russian management
30. company to run things, and the
31. results were distinctly Old World.
32. As Robbins said in an interview,
33. “I got tired of dancing in
34. boots, bloomers, and a wig. I
35. said ‘Why can’t we dance about
36. American subjects? Why can’t we
37. talk about the way we dance today
38. and how we are now?’”
39. Good question. The art form was
40. stuck in grandiose territory.
41. “Ballet was strictly an operatic
42. spectacle,” as the current artistic
43. director of American Ballet
44. Theatre, Kevin McKenzie, said.
45. “There was a lot of use of allegory
46. and symbolism. Pretty much
47. everyone was dead or a fairy or
48. a swan or a mythical beast of
49. some form.”
50. But the rules, and the roles, were
51. changing. De Mille had debuted
52. the Western-themed Rodeo in
53. 1942 for the Ballet Russe de Monte
54. Carlo at the Metropolitan Opera
55. House. In 1942, Antony Tudor
56. created Pillar of Fire for Ballet
57. Theatre, which took up
58. contemporary issues with
59. smoldering realism.
60. From this crucible emerged
61. Fancy Free, with its jazzy score by
62. the then-unknown Leonard
63. Bernstein and iconic set by Oliver
64. Smith. In the one-act plot, the
65. three chummy sailors befriend two
66. girls, but as there aren’t enough
67. girls to go around, the boys
68. challenge each other to a dance-off.
69. Robbins designed the three solos
70. to suit the different talents of the
71. dancers, himself and two close
72. friends. His innovation was to
73. make the dance and story
74. seamless; the movements tell the
75. story and enhance our
76. understanding of the characters.
77. By embracing American subjects,
78. Robbins found a plentiful source
79. for ideas that could be made into
80. musical theater. Robbins’s
81. ultimate talent was in his ability
82. to communicate ideas in
83. movement—with his own style. In
84. ballet and on Broadway, Robbins
85. set a new course that was essential
86. to the development of American
87. dance.
88. That point cannot be made without
89. comparison with Europe, where
90. ballet companies were often
91. established under the rubric of
92. opera companies and sustained by
93. royal or governmental patronage.
94. In the opera house system, ballet
95. was taught according to a strict
96. technique that created a specific
97. identity with a long-standing
98. tradition. The Paris Opera Ballet
99. has a different style from Moscow’s
100. Bolshoi Ballet, which was trained
101. to look quite different from the
102. Kirov Ballet.
103. Without these temples of tradition,
104. American dancers pieced their
105. training together. This
106. intersection of different styles and
107. techniques gave the dancers a
108. different instrument from their
109. European counterparts. Robbins’s
110. early life provides a classic
111. example. Raised in New Jersey, he
112. was one of two children in a hard-
113. working Russian-Jewish family.
114. His sister, Sonia, studied dance
115. with the devotees of Isadora
116. Duncan and performed with
117. Gluck Sandor’s expressionist
118. dance troupe.
119. Robbins studied the same Duncan
120. technique, but his first formal
121. training was in the style of Martha
122. Graham. He later landed work as
123. an apprentice in Sandor’s
124. company, but it wasn’t until the
125. fall of 1937 that he was advised to
126. study ballet. Amanda Vaill writes,
127. “In America, as opposed to
128. decadent Old Europe, modern
129. dance—which had evolved out of a
130. peculiar confluence of theatrical
131. dancing, physical culture, and
132. female emancipation—was the
133. thing.”