Customer Reviews

Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance

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All in all, I'm touched by Deborah Jowitt's well meaning and comprehensive biography of Jerry Robbins. She digs under the surface of his ballet and Broadway work and finds a whole lot more than I had ever imagined. Again and again she returns to the paradox of the name, how "Jerry Robbins" was a fake, all-American and showbizzy place name for the real, suffering, inward, outcast Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz, and how Robbins could never be happy knowing this. He loathed himself from the inside out and the outside in: no wonder he treated others so terribly. Deborah Jowitt's years of research into the Robbins papers, those revealing scrapbooks and journals, have really paid off, for although I think in general Greg Lawrence's biography better in most ways, Jowitt's contains innumerable examples of revelation right from the horse's mouth, scraps of diaristic strip-tease that really pay off in almost every case. We can see how, in Gypsy, there had to be a strip-tease number in which three women explain, "You Gotta Have a Gimmick," because Robbins realized early on that was the path to artistic greatness--not the gimmick per se, but the emotional and psychological undressing.

Along the way Jowitt sketches in many portraits, some of them ravishingly done. Leonard Bernstein has never seemed so much himself before. John Kriza, the gadabout dancer from Ballet Theater days, seems as "Fancy Free" as the roles he created in Robbins' early work. Jowitt's greatest "creation" as it were is Tanaquil Le Clercq, the tragic, French-born ballerina who came down with polio while Balanchine's fourth wife. Le Clercq is the real heroine of the book: everything we think about, oh, say, Audrey Hepburn was really Tanaquil Le Clercq gone commercial: gorgeous, radiant, utterly chic, loveable, wildly talented in many different areas. I had just barely heard of her before and now I want me my Tanaquil Le Clercq! I'm going to have to go down to the Robbins Foundation and watch some primitive kinescopes of her. Jowitt actually saw her dance and has apparently never gotten over it. Her next book should be all about "Tanny"!

I did think that Jowitt is a bit sklmpy in her treatment of the HUAC thing. Growing up, I got the sense that Robbins' naming names made hum utterly despised. Even I, as a child of five, knew what he had done made him scum. And yet you never get a sense of what it was like for Robbins living, if not with guilt, then with the simple fact that thousands of people abhorred him. Likewise I think Jowitt isn't exactly the right person to write about Robbins' sex life, and when AIDS enters the picture, she seems bound and determined to avoid the glum subject once and for all. Finally, her lack of editorializing is all very well, but I for one do not believe that the later, experimental work is on a par with INTERPLAY, THE GUESTS, THE CAGE, AFTERNOON OF A FAUN or THE CONCERT. Why not? We don't get an explanation. It was the sixties, pretty much, and Robbins started taking the drugs and stopped wearing suits. But there must have been more to it. WATERMILL is no picnic.

Any valid bio of Robbins would have to result in a narrative of the development of dance and musical theatre in America, since the 1940s. While Jowitt gives us the, often sad, milestones in this man's life, her major thrust throughout this long and always exciting book is on his work. She delves into virtually every creation of his, including his generally poorly received occasional forays into non-musical theatre. Detailed attention is given to both concept, creation and execution of his prolific endeavors. Her in depth analysis of each of his works, often quite technical, VIVIDLY recall many great performances of these masterpieces.
While not necessarily for those with a casual interest in dance, the facts of his life, as well as the cavalcade of his shows and ballets, makes for a read that is always more than just factual. Interestingly, Jowitt seems never to editorialize on Robbins' work. But then again, why attempt to laud a universally acclaimed genius ?

I'm amazed at the other reviews for this book that I have read (above) and their unstinting praise for a long, incredibly boring and ultimately dissapointing slog through Mr Robbins life.
Perhaps Miss Jowitt has managed to bewitch or possibly hypnotize the other readers. Personally I found this drawn out rambling book to be nothing more than a catalogue of dates, dance moves and occasional affairs.
And please know that I am a huge Jerome Robbins fan and consider him to have been quite simply a genius in his field. I could seriously have done with less talk and more action.
I wonder how much free access Miss Jowitt had to Robbins personal letters or what her subject's estate actually allowed her to write about. She delivers a bland, un-emotional and hand tied account of someone her readers should have found a page-turning study.
How does one compose a book about the man who created at least three of the worlds most acclaimed, enduring and legendary Broadway musicals and gloss over them in a matter of pages? If you suffer the 600 pages of this book you'll discover how.
Unlike Mr Robbins own work, I couldn't wait for Miss Jowitt's to end.

Jerome Robbins was a hard act to follow. Deborah Jowitt's Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance should be placed upon every public library shelf, alphabetically, before William Shakespeare, for only he could. Robbins is to 20th Century American Modern Dance Theater what Shakespeare was to the Elizabethan Stage, an author of infinite variety, a man for all ages.

Ms. Jowitt gives us a scholarly blueprint for amateur, musical theater lover, and balletomane; one that should be made available to all engaged in the academic pursuits of the Arts, Letters, and Sciences. Jerome Robbins, legendary theatrical genius, is brilliantly extolled in exacting detail and rendered with the loving care of a biographer dedicated to communicating this great artist's "message." He was the least difficult of men. All he wanted was boundless love.

Deborah Jowitt's Jerome Robbins is written in a trenchant prose style, a cross between WCBS TV celebrity correspondent Walter Cronkite's You Are There, and Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Her tone is one of a high-powered sports newscaster delivering to her audience a polished blow-by-blow description of celebrity "plays." These are not professional precision ball passing reports; they are larger than life descriptive interactions of 20th Century Show Business's great personalities Robbins knew and loved.

Jowitt presents us with an eyeful. It were as though she uses a high definition, technicolor, movie screen attached to a time machine to fly us, like a motion picture director's crane, throughout multiple three dimensional scenes Jerome Robbins choreographs, before our eyes. In Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance, Deborah Jowitt has delivered a state-of-the art biography that goes beyond the intricate prose of great fiction.

Jowitt instantaneously captures "the moment," and translates into words that in effect rolls a continuous major motion picture before us, without skipping a beat. One can almost hear the music that Robbins brilliantly illustrates. Jowitt delineates visions of Robbins forging The Great White Way for talented choreographers to follow: Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett, Twyla Tharp.

Jowitt's dance training and choreographic practice is revealed in her ability to poetically describe Robbins at work. "...he excelled at the artificed use of the apparently accidental. When a moment in a Robbins ballet looks contrived, it can be because one is not simply moved by it but aware of how the choreographer calculated its effect...."

A culmination of five years of writing, and an historical perspective of thirty-five years of looking at the dance, Deborah Jowitt has emerged as America's Dean of 21st Century Dance; following in the tradition of a great poet's translation of classical ephemera, the work of Edwin Denby, a chronicler of The New York City Ballet. Her Jerome Robbins is a masterpiece. Deborah Jowitt's Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance should remain on the public library shelf beside William Shakespeare's The Complete Works for all time.