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\"A selection of the unpublished writings, journals, and letters of Jerome Robbins, with additional texts by Amanda Vaill\"-- Provided by publisher.

Between 1958 and 1961, Jerome Robbins's Ballets: U.S.A. company toured to European arts festivals with a repertory of new and existing works, most of which remain in performance more than six decades later. Cold War political and artistic imperatives intersected in choreography that circulated visions of “American” innovation and youthful vitality, danced to an eclectic range of scores by a mixed-race cast. Archival documentation of the funding process reveals discussions about aesthetic priorities and the choreographer's responsibility to the US government. Analysis of press coverage of the performances also considers the extent to which diplomatic objectives were achieved.

From its Broadway debut to the Oscar-winning film to countless amateur productions, West Side Story is nothing less than an American touchstone an updating of Shakespeare located in a vividly realized, rapidly changing postwar New York. That vision of postwar New York is at the heart of Julia L. Foulkes's A Place for Us. A lifelong fan of the show, Foulkes became interested in its history when she made an unexpected discovery: parts of the iconic film version were shot on the demolition site of what would ultimately be part of the Lincoln Center redevelopment a crowning jewel of postwar urban renewal. Foulkes interweaves the story of the creation of the musical and film with the remaking of the Upper West Side and the larger tale of New York's postwar aspirations.0Making unprecedented use of Jerome Robbins's revelatory papers, she shows the crucial role played by the political commitments of Robbins and his fellow gay, Jewish collaborators, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents: their determination to evoke life in New York as it was actually lived helped give West Side Story its unshakable sense of place even as it put forward a vision of a new, vigorous, determinedly multicultural American city. Beautifully written and full of surprises for even the most dedicated West Side Story fan, \"A Place for Us\" is a powerful new exploration of an American classic.

This essay considers Jerome Robbins's 1950 ballet Age of Anxiety in relation to the W. H. Auden poem on which it is based and to the particular pressures on Robbins in the early 1950s as a Jewish, gay, former Communist Party member. Making use of Robbins's annotated copy of Auden's poem, his choreographic notes, and extant film of the dance work, this article argues that Auden's poem serves as a key to reading back into Robbins's ballet a set of specific Cold War personal and political anxieties even as the choreography moved away from overt political statements.

Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins stand as giants of the musical-theatre world, but it was ballet that launched their stage careers and established their relationship. With Fancy Free (1944), their triumphant debut collaboration produced by Ballet Theatre, Bernstein, Robbins, and set designer Oliver Smith-all in their mid-twenties- captured the spirit of wartime New York, created a defining ballet of the period still widely performed today, and became overnight sensations. The hit musical On the Town (1944) and a now largely forgotten ballet, Facsimile (1946), followed over the next two years. Drawing extensively on previously unpublished archival documents, Bernstein and Robbins: The Early Ballets provides a richly detailed and original historical account of the creation, premiere, and reception of Fancy Free and Facsimile. It reveals the vital and sometimes conflicting role of Ballet Theatre, explores how Bernstein composed the scores, sheds light on the central importance of Oliver Smith, and considers the legacy of these works for all involved. The result is a new understanding of Bernstein, Robbins, and this formative period in their lives.

Jerome Robbins (1918–1998), known as the first important American-born ballet choreographer, set over sixty ballets and numerous pieces for Broadway during his lifetime. His success can be attributed not only to his assimilation of different choreographic styles, but also to his attentiveness to the music. He was equally adept at setting a wide variety of musical styles, ranging from Frédéric Chopin (viz., The Concert 1956), Leonard Bernstein (viz., West Side Story 1957), and J. S. Bach (viz., The Goldberg Variations 1971) to Alban Berg (viz., In Memory Of … 1985). If he excelled at realistic character portrayals in some settings, in others he created abstract visual realizations of the music. Although Robbins choreographed many musical styles throughout his career, he developed a special affinity for the music of Bach at the end of his life. It is notable that his final three new choreographies were all based on the music of Bach: A Suite of Dances (1994); Two& Three-Part Inventions (1994); and Brandenburg (1997). Moreover, Bach's music was the last that he heard before he died; the soft strains of a recording of Bach's French Suites reportedly filled the air as Robbins lay dying at his house on 81st Street in New York in 1998. Based on recordings, letters, essays, and other choreographic sketches, some unpublished, this essay examines Robbins's littlediscussed late Bach settings in relation to concepts of Late Style. While Robbins's settings of three final pieces by Bach might not be summative—that is, they might not be as epic, lengthy, and encyclopedic as his The Goldberg Variations from 1971—they can be seen as synthesizing a lifetime of choreographic styles, including ballet, modern dance, theater, and folk. Since they were all abstract realizations of Bach's music through movement, as opposed to narrative settings, Bach's music seems directly to have inspired Robbins's contrapuntal choreography. In turning to Bach for his final creative projects, Robbins was thus participating in certain ways of thinking about art that Edward Said has claimed can be associated with artistic Late Style, including counterpoint and fragmentation. In addition, aspects of the rhythmic energy and stylistic pluralism so central to Bach's music became muses for Robbins's multi-stylistic choreographies late in life, even as he displayed both nostalgia for the past and a newfound interest in youth and youthfulness. In drawing connections among the last works of Robbins, the music of Bach, and theories of Late Style, this essay provides one of the first explorations of concepts of Late Style in relation to choreography, an art form in which the aging body and the artistic work are closely linked. In addition, it contributes new knowledge not only about the late choreographies of Robbins, but also about movement responses to Bach's music, and ways in which Bach reception has intersected with characteristics of Late Style.