West Side Story-Gym Mambo

Jerome Robbins:Early Years

"(born Oct. 11, 1918, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died July 29, 1998, New York City) one of the most popular and imaginative American choreographers of the 20th century. Robbins was first known for his skillful use of contemporary American themes in ballets and Broadway and Hollywood musicals. He won acclaim for highly innovative ballets structured within the traditional framework of classical dance movements.

The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Rabinowitz studied chemistry for one year at New York University before embarking on a career as a dancer in 1936. He studied a wide array of dance traditions, appeared with the Gluck Sandor–Felicia Sorel Dance Center, and danced in the chorus of several Broadway musicals. In 1940 he joined Ballet Theater (now American Ballet Theatre), where he soon began dancing such important roles as Petrouchka. (About this time he and his parents changed the family name to Robbins.) In 1944 Robbins choreographed his first, spectacularly successful ballet, Fancy Free, with a musical score by the young composer Leonard Bernstein. This ballet, featuring three American sailors on shore leave in New York City during World War II, displayed Robbins' acute sense of theatre and his ability to capture the essence of contemporary American dance using the vocabulary of classical ballet. Later that year Robbins and Bernstein, in collaboration with the lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green, expanded Fancy Free into a successful Broadway musical called On the Town."