When Jerome Robbins choreographed Fancy Free in 1944, his legendary career was only just beginning. The man who brought us many of Broadway’s most beloved hits including West Side Story, On the Town, Peter Pan, and Fiddler on the Roof (to name just a few) forged a unique path.
He could have been a corset salesman…
Jerome Robbins, born Jerome Rabinowitz, was the son of working class Russian-Jewish immigrants. He enrolled as a student at New York University, but because of his failing grades and the lasting effects of the Depression, his parents insisted he drop out and work for the family business, the Comfort Corset Company.
Or a puppeteer
Instead, he sought out an apprenticeship in puppeteering with Tony Sarg, who had a successful touring marionette show. When this turned out to be a dead-end, Jerry found a teacher and mentor in Senya Gluck-Sandor, whose Dance Center was leading the way for modern dance in New York City. Robbins was a quick study of Sandor’s theatrical, expressionistic style, and in return for running errands and putting up posters, he was granted access to dance and choreography classes.
He was a Jack-of-all-trades…
In addition to modern dance and ballet training, the young Robbins was choreographing burlesque-style sketches at a resort in the Poconos and dancing in Broadway choruses.
And master of many
In the summer of 1940, he was accepted into the corps of the recently formed Ballet Theatre (which would later become American Ballet Theatre) and quickly advanced to solo roles. His first major choreographic work was Fancy Free, a ballet about three sailors on shore leave in New York City. He tapped a young, unknown composer named Leonard Bernstein to write the music and the piece had a celebrated debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1944. A musical comedy based on the ballet called On The Town premiered on Broadway later that same year, and the MGM film version, starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, opened just five years later.