Jerome Robbins: The Western Definition Of Dance

One of the first things that our class learned was the western definition of dance, which is that dance is representational. Aristotle believed that “art is imitation of nature” and the 19th c. ballets agreed. To represent nature, ballets used gestures and mime to tell their stories, with each movement correlating to a similar real world action. Fast forward a couple hundred years to the 1940s, choreographer Jerome Robbins followed the 19th c. ballet tradition. Robbins placed an emphasis on utilizing gestures and mime to create ballets that had realistic, individual characters which can be observed in his ballets Fancy Free, The Concert, and Dances at a Gathering. Robbins’s focus on character development made his ballets more relatable
While at Gluck-Sandor, Robbins not only learned ballet, but he was also taught modern and Broadway dancing and had his first exposure to expressive, theatrical style of dance. In 1940, Robbins joined Ballet Theater, now known as the American Ballet Theater, as a member of the corps de ballet and was soon promoted to a soloist. During his time at Ballet Theater, Robbins wanted to create a ballet for the company and began to choreograph. In 1944, at the age of 25, Robbins premiered his first ballet, Fancy Free, which became a massive success and created name recognition for Robbins. In the following years, he continued to produce more ballets for Ballet Theater but in 1949, he left the company to join New York City Ballet. By the late 1950’s, Robbins took a step away from the ballet world and focused on his Broadway career. In this time, he worked on musicals such as The King and I, West Side Story, Gypsy, and Fiddler on the Roof. By 1969, Robbins went back to work with New York City Ballet with his first piece being Dances at a Gathering. In 1988, Robbins retired from New York City Ballet, but continued to choreograph for them until 1998. In his six-decade career, Robbins created over 60 ballets, worked on 15 Broadway musicals, and according to dance critic Clive Barnes, Jerome Robbins gave classical