Jerome Robbins Reading Guide

TIMELINE 1904 Harry Rabinowitz, father of Jerome Robbins, emigrates from Poland to New York, where he opens a delicatessen on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Feb. 9 1911 Harry Rabinowitz marries Lena Rips.

1913 Sonia Rabinowitz, elder sister to Jerome Robbins, is born.

Oct. 11 1918 Jerome Robbins, birth name Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz, is born at the Jewish Maternity Hospital at 270 East Broadway.

1921 The family moves to Weehawken, New Jersey, where Harry opens a corset factory. Jerome grows up taking piano lessons and dance classes, does well at school, and enjoys creative writing. He also has perfect pitch and an excellent sense of rhythm.

Summer 1924 Lena takes Jerome and his sister Sonia to the family’s native village of Rozhanka, a shtetl that was once in Russia but, after the First World War, became part of Poland.

Mid 1930’s In the summers, the Rabinowitz family spends time at Camp Kittatinny, where Jerry performs in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas and vaudeville routines.

1936 Sonia introduces her brother Jerry to The Dance Center, a small dance company on West 56th Street in New York City. The company is run by the dancer, choreographer, and director Gluck Sandor and his wife, Felicia Sorel. Sandor, whose birth name was Sammy Gluck, encourages Jerry to acquire a stage name.

Feb. 1937 The Dance Center presents a concert at the Federal Music Project’s theater on West 55th Street, in which Jerry Rabinowitz is credited as “Gerald Robbins,” the first iteration of his stage name.

Late 1930’s Robbins, who has already shown an interest in choreography, enrolls in Bessie Schönberg’s composition class in New York City. He also begins studying ballet. After unsuccessfully applying to the School of American Ballet, he studies with Ella Daganova, former member of Anna Pavlova’s touring company. To pay for classes, he does janitorial work around Daganova’s studio. He also begins taking small roles at the Yiddish Art Theatre and auditioning for Broadway musicals.

1938 Robbins attends Camp Tamiment, in the Poconos, a resort with a summer performance season. While there, he and the other performers stage weekly Broadway-style revues. He creates his first choreographies.

Robbins returns to Tamiment every summer through 1941. He describes Tamiment as “my first contact with other professional theater people.”

1938 Lands his first role in a Broadway show, The Great Lady, choreographed by George Balanchine. Later in the same year, he dances in The Straw Hat Revue, for which he also does some uncredited choreography.

Jan. 1940 Ballet Theater, later American Ballet Theater, holds its début season in New York. By the summer, Jerome Robbins is a member of the company, with a salary of $32.50 per week. He works with prominent choreographers including Antony Tudor, Agnes de Mille, and Michel Fokine, and dances with such colleagues as Nora Kaye, Muriel Bentley, and John Kriza.

Early 1940’s Briefly joins the American Communist Party, along with his sister Sonia.

Spring 1942 Jerome Robbins is drafted, but is released after he tells the draft board, in an interview, that he has had homosexual experiences. He remains with Ballet Theatre.

Apr. 1943 Performs the role of Benvolio in Antony Tudor’s Romeo and Juliet with Ballet Theatre.

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