The following passage is adapted from an article by Pia Catton titled “Dancing American” that first appeared in Humanities magazine (© 2009 Pia Catton).
- The premiere of Fancy Free, on
- April 18, 1944, catapulted twenty-
- five-year-old choreographer
- Jerome Robbins to stardom. He
- had created a category-defying
- ballet drawn from real American
- life: wartime New York was
- teeming with young men in
- uniform and gals in swishy dresses.
- He wasn’t the first choreographer
- to find inspiration in the common
- man, but he was at the red-hot
- center of a new approach to dance.
- From ballet to the musical theater,
- choreographers on these shores
- were creating works that did not
- always look to the past, but instead
- to the present and future.
- Fancy Free did not appear out of
- thin air. Robbins created it while
- employed as a dancer in the
- touring Ballet Theatre, which had
- been founded in 1940 and was
- fertile ground for stage artists.
- Though the company presented
- classical ballets, it encouraged new
- work. Soon though, Ballet Theatre,
- suffering from financial trouble,
- brought in a Russian management
- company to run things, and the
- results were distinctly Old World.
- As Robbins said in an interview,
- “I got tired of dancing in
- boots, bloomers, and a wig. I
- said ‘Why can’t we dance about
- American subjects? Why can’t we
- talk about the way we dance today
- and how we are now?’”
- Good question. The art form was
- stuck in grandiose territory.
- “Ballet was strictly an operatic
- spectacle,” as the current artistic
- director of American Ballet
- Theatre, Kevin McKenzie, said.
- “There was a lot of use of allegory
- and symbolism. Pretty much
- everyone was dead or a fairy or
- a swan or a mythical beast of
- some form.”
- But the rules, and the roles, were
- changing. De Mille had debuted
- the Western-themed Rodeo in
- 1942 for the Ballet Russe de Monte
- Carlo at the Metropolitan Opera
- House. In 1942, Antony Tudor
- created Pillar of Fire for Ballet
- Theatre, which took up
- contemporary issues with
- smoldering realism.
- From this crucible emerged
- Fancy Free, with its jazzy score by
- the then-unknown Leonard
- Bernstein and iconic set by Oliver
- Smith. In the one-act plot, the
- three chummy sailors befriend two
- girls, but as there aren’t enough
- girls to go around, the boys
- challenge each other to a dance-off.
- Robbins designed the three solos
- to suit the different talents of the
- dancers, himself and two close
- friends. His innovation was to
- make the dance and story
- seamless; the movements tell the
- story and enhance our
- understanding of the characters.
- By embracing American subjects,
- Robbins found a plentiful source
- for ideas that could be made into
- musical theater. Robbins’s
- ultimate talent was in his ability
- to communicate ideas in
- movement—with his own style. In
- ballet and on Broadway, Robbins
- set a new course that was essential
- to the development of American
- dance.
- That point cannot be made without
- comparison with Europe, where
- ballet companies were often
- established under the rubric of
- opera companies and sustained by
- royal or governmental patronage.
- In the opera house system, ballet
- was taught according to a strict
- technique that created a specific
- identity with a long-standing
- tradition. The Paris Opera Ballet
- has a different style from Moscow’s
- Bolshoi Ballet, which was trained
- to look quite different from the
- Kirov Ballet.
- Without these temples of tradition,
- American dancers pieced their
- training together. This
- intersection of different styles and
- techniques gave the dancers a
- different instrument from their
- European counterparts. Robbins’s
- early life provides a classic
- example. Raised in New Jersey, he
- was one of two children in a hard-
- working Russian-Jewish family.
- His sister, Sonia, studied dance
- with the devotees of Isadora
- Duncan and performed with
- Gluck Sandor’s expressionist
- dance troupe.
- Robbins studied the same Duncan
- technique, but his first formal
- training was in the style of Martha
- Graham. He later landed work as
- an apprentice in Sandor’s
- company, but it wasn’t until the
- fall of 1937 that he was advised to
- study ballet. Amanda Vaill writes,
- “In America, as opposed to
- decadent Old Europe, modern
- dance—which had evolved out of a
- peculiar confluence of theatrical
- dancing, physical culture, and
- female emancipation—was the
- thing.”