Discussion Guide

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

TO OPEN THE CONVERSATION, BEGIN BY ASKING:

1. Jerome Robbins was once a household name; is it still so today? Which of his works have survived in the popular imagination, and why? How does the fact that his name has faded somewhat from popular memory reflect the ephemerality of dance itself?

2. Jerome Robbins is the author of both the ballet The Goldberg Variations and the musical Peter Pan. Was he a popular or a highbrow artist, or a bit of both? And if the latter, how did he combine these sensibilities?

3. When a choreographer begins a new dance, he or she is faced with a studio, a few dancers, and little else except the music. How does the music help guide the choreography? How do the two support and enlarge each other?

4. How do Robbins’s dances reflect his desire to see real people, not just performers, onstage, and how did

Robbins go about producing this effect?

5. Robbins was not an abstract artist—he was drawn to stories and narrative. How did this differentiate him from other choreographers of his era, and how is this reflected in his works?

6. How did Robbins’s anxieties and complexes about being gay and about being Jewish affect the trajectory of his life and of his art?

OVERTURE

1. Wendy Lesser describes Jerome Robbins as “the most hated man on Broadway.” How and why did he acquire this reputation, and what were some of the causes behind this tendency to mistreat and manipulate his collaborators?

2. Robbins was a dancer, a choreographer, a director of musicals and prose theater, and co-director of films.

He also drew, wrote, and made collages. How did all these facets of his identity and talent coalesce into the artist that he would become?

3. In what way does Jerome Robbins’s upbringing and education reflect the cultural and social aspirations of his Jewish, immigrant parents in early twentieth-century New York?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

FANCY FREE

1. Robbins and Bernstein met in 1943. The two had much in common—both were children of immigrants,

Jewish, and conflicted about their sexuality— and the two would produce several works together. Lesser describes them as “speaking the same language,” artistically. What were the characteristics of this common language?

2. Fancy Free, Bernstein and Robbins’s first collaboration, was a ballet about three sailors on shore leave in New York City, which premiered during the Second World War. What elements combined to make this ballet such an instant, and lasting, success?

3. In this chapter, Lesser describes a memorable lift that Robbins used in Fancy Free, in which the male dancer slowly lowers his partner to the ground, stealing a kiss along the way. What was special about this particular lift, and more generally, about Robbins’s partnering?

4. Fancy Free, like many of Robbins’s ballets and musical-theater choreographies, combines everyday gesture with codified dance language. How did Robbins use this particular combination to inject intimacy and humanity into his ballets?

AGE OF ANXIETY

1. How did Age of Anxiety, created in 1950 and inspired by Auden’s poem of the same name, reflect the preoccupations of the post-war period in America? How did it reflect Robbins’s own state of mind, including the struggle he felt between success and authenticity?

2. The fifties in America were a time of red-baiting and conformism, best embodied by Joseph McCarthy and his work on the House Un-American Activities Committee. In May of 1953 Robbins, who had once been a member of the Communist Party, testified voluntarily before the HUAC, where he supplied the names of several people in his circle, as fellow former Communists. How did Robbins’s fear of being outed as gay, and other insecurities, lead to this outcome, which would haunt him for decades?

3. What role did feelings of guilt play in Robbins’s life?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

THE KING AND I

1. In preparation for The King and I, which is set in the Kingdom of Siam during the nineteenth century,

Robbins researched dances from Cambodia, Laos, India, and Japan. He then created an East-Asian-style ballet based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, one of the highlights of the musical. How did Robbins combine East-

Asian dance and ballet, and in what ways does this fusion escape or fall prey to the pitfalls of Orientalism, cultural appropriation, and cliché?

2. In the musical, which is based on real events, Robbins depicts the King of Siam as a benevolent despot surrounded by a harem of women. How does Robbins’s portrait suggest possible parallels to the leadership of the choreographer George Balanchine at New York City Ballet? Was this conscious or unconscious?

3. Robbins worked at New York City Ballet at a time when Balanchine was generally considered the incomparable genius of ballet, particularly in America. Robbins himself considered Balanchine to be the great choreographer of his era. In 1971, Robbins wrote in his journal: “When I watch Balanchine work, it’s so extraordinary I want to give up.” To what extent did Balanchine’s reputation overshadow Robbins’s and affect his sense of self-worth, creating an unhealthy competition between the two? To what extent was

Balanchine aware of this dynamic?

4. In 1945, Balanchine told Robbins that ballet “doesn’t have to be so theatrical,” elaborating: “there’s a stage; it’s empty. Four girls come on and dance with one boy. They go off and leave him alone. It’s theatrical.”

What did Balanchine mean by this, and what did this idea reveal to Robbins about the movement of bodies onstage and its ability to convey meaning without a plot?

5. The dancer Tanaquil Le Clercq was a muse and collaborator to both Balanchine and Robbins. Both men loved her, each in his own way, but she became Balanchine’s wife. What made Le Clercq such a compelling theatrical presence, and what role did she play in the life and art of both men?

THE CAGE

1. Robbins made several ballets that dramatize the relations between the sexes. In The Cage, he depicts a tribe or hive of female insects who mate and kill. In In the Night, he depicts three aspects of romantic love between heterosexual couples. How is Robbins’s view of relations between men and women, including his own with his mother, reflected in his different works?

2. Robbins maintained romantic relationships with both men and women, sometimes simultaneously. Was this a source of conflict for him, and how was this conflict reflected in his work?

3. The movement language in The Cage is extreme, and in some ways, highly stylized. In what ways is this a ballet about the extreme, hyper-stylized qualities of ballet itself?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

AFTERNOON OF A FAUN

1. In 1912, Vaslav Nijinsky created a ballet for himself, set to music by Debussy, about a faun who encounters a group of nymphs and becomes aroused, eventually expressing this arousal in a gesture of onanistic pleasure with one of the nymph’s scarves. How does Robbins’s 1953 Afternoon of a Faun echo or make reference to the original, and in what ways does it diverge from it?

2. Robbins’s ballet is set in an imaginary ballet studio, in which two dancers stretch and do exercises before engaging in a pas de deux. In what ways does it illustrate Robbins’s love for and keen observation of dancers at work?

3. In Afternoon of a Faun, Robbins famously creates the illusion of two dancers staring at themselves in the mirror. The audience is the mirror. How is this illusion created and what role does the audience play in this illusion?

4. In 1956, Tanaquil Le Clercq, one of the most exciting dancers of her generation, developed polio while on tour with New York City Ballet and was paralyzed from the waist down. What role did Balanchine and

Robbins play in her recovery and life after this tragic event, and how did their reactions to her situation differ?

WESTSIDE STORY

1. Robbins began thinking about an updated version of Romeo and Juliet set among urban gangs in 1949, something he confided to Leonard Bernstein. Originally, he imagined that the gangs would be Catholic and

Jewish. How and why did the idea evolve into what it would one day become in 1957, when West Side

Story opened on Broadway?

2. How did pop culture and events in the news in the 1950’s shape West Side Story?

3. As he had when he was making The King and I, Robbins researched different dance forms during the creation period for West Side Story. To what extent were these dance styles represented in the Broadway musical and subsequent film? Were they authentically portrayed, and was that authenticity or lack thereof important?

4. Robbins was imperious and difficult to work with during the creation of West Side Story. He snapped at

Bernstein and intentionally created tensions among the performers. Why did he do this? What was he hoping to obtain? Is this approach possible or even desirable today?

5. The opening sequence of the 1961 film of West Side Story is legendary for its cinematography and for the way it brings the viewer into the story. What makes this sequence so special?

6. What is unique about the way West Side Story tells the story through dance?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF

1. Robbins’s father was born in a shtetl in Poland, and Robbins visited his paternal home of Rozhanka as a child. How did Robbins mine his own life and background when imagining and crafting Fiddler on the Roof?

2. In what ways did the focus on the theme of tradition in Fiddler—a central motif—reflect Robbins’s own conflicted relationship with his father?

3. Robbins shied away from Jewish subjects until later in life, when he created Fiddler on the Roof and

Dybbuk. What was Jerome Robbins’s relationship to Judaism and how did it evolve throughout his life?

How was it reflected in these works?

4. During a tour to Israel with his company Ballets: USA, Robbins attended Sabbath celebrations at a Hasidic synagogue, and saw Hasidic dances begin performed. How did this experience inform the “Bottle Dance” in Fiddler on the Roof? And what is the significance of the “Bottle Dance”? How is it similar to the “Dance at the Gym” in West Side Story, or “The Small House of Uncle Tom” in The King and I?

5. More generally, how did Robbins integrate “ethnic” dance into his personal dance idiom in both his ballets and his Broadway work?

DANCES AT A GATHERING

1. In 1965, Robbins, a successful Broadway choreographer and director, created the not-for-profit American Theatre Lab, an experimental incubator for new work. What was the purpose and scope of the project?

2. After over a decade away from New York City Ballet, during which he worked mainly on Broadway, what induced Robbins to return to the company to create Dances at a Gathering in 1969?

3. How are the circumstances of its creation, piece by piece, with only a handful of dancers in the room at a time, reflected in the structure and feel of Dances at a Gathering?

4. How does Dances exemplify the idea that a ballet can project meaning without having a narrative or plot?

How does casting, and the number and arrangement of dancers onstage create dramatic tension, stories, and moods?

5. In what ways does Robbins play with conventions of femininity and masculinity in Dances at a Gathering and other works?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

1. In 1971, Jerome Robbins created a ballet set to Bach’s Goldberg Variations. What is it about Bach’s music that presents such a challenge to choreographers?

2. How is the structure of the Variations reflected in the ballet, and more generally, what role does the structure of a musical piece play in the creation of a ballet?

3. The New Yorker’s dance critic Arlene Crice consistently gave Robbins bad reviews; even her good reviews were begrudging. How can the disapproval of a particularly influential critic affect an artist’s sense of selfworth as well as the way an artist’s entire oeuvre is perceived?

4. As he had with the music of Chopin, Robbins continued to make ballets set to Bach’s music. Why do artists often stick with a subject, like Monet with his haystacks, for example, for years? How did Robbins’s Chopin and Bach ballets evolve?

5. How does an aging choreographer get across his choreographic ideas when he is no longer able to show them himself, as exemplified by Robbins’s collaboration with Mikhail Baryshnikov when creating A Suite of

Dances?

IN MEMORY OF...

1. Robbins created his ballet In Memory Of… in 1985, after experiencing the death of several people close to him, and during the AIDS crisis. Alban Berg had written the violin concerto to which it is set after the death of a friend’s daughter. How did Robbins’s increasing concern with death manifest itself in this ballet, and how does he express this angst and sadness through movement?

2. Balanchine, Robbins’s lodestar and friend, died in 1983, of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. What did the death of this giant of twentieth-century ballet mean to Robbins?

3. After Balanchine’s death, the New York City Ballet board and Lincoln Kirstein were divided over who should lead the company into the future. Why didn’t Robbins take over the reins at New York City Ballet after

Balanchine’s death?

4. What is Robbins’s legacy at New York City Ballet? And on Broadway? West Side Story was just released in a new film version by Steven Spielberg. What does this mega-production say about the lasting effect of

Robbins’s work?