Word: ballets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...decades, Robbins commuted easily, prodigiously, between the ballet and Broadway. One form fed the other. In 1943 he danced in Anthony Tudor's Romeo and Juliet; six years later, he devised his own Romeo and Juliet ballet, The Guests; in 1957 he reworked the theme for West Side Story and, the next year he adapted that show's street rhythms in his ballet N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz. His creativity and vigor seemed inexhaustible: 20 musicals and 19 ballets in 20 years. Even Robbins is impressed. "When I started doing this show," he says, "I looked at what I did then...
Since Fiddler on the Roof in 1964, he has devoted his time to creating pieces for City Ballet. "I never said, 'That's that, I will never work on Broadway again.' It wasn't so much a turning away from Broadway as it was a turning toward something else." Stephen Sondheim (West Side Story, Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) believes Robbins was corseted by the inevitable compromises built into musical collaboration: "Jerry would say, 'It is ridiculous to put on a musical in five weeks,' and he is right -- it is ridiculous. But those...
...this show, that meant: go back. Because he had not recorded or notated any of his works, Robbins assembled casts and creators from the old productions and led a kind of seminar in Broadway archaeology. To reconstruct the bathing-beauty ballet from High Button Shoes, Robbins had the score and some silent footage that had been shot surreptitiously. Luckily, the national company's dance captain, Kevin Joe Jonson, had made notations of the ballet on tattered sheets of paper that he carted around through five marriages. For the Comedy Tonight number from Forum, an original cast member sketched...
...wasp. You know how a wasp buzzes around and keeps you on your toes and worries about everything. There's a sound in the air that keeps everything moving." At times the buzz becomes a sonic boom. "Jerry was still rehearsing during previews," says Victor Castelli, a City Ballet soloist who is assisting Robbins. "The kids are exhausted because they are not used to it, and Jerry will be frustrated and annoyed and will yell and scream." But those who have survived Robbins' basic training testify to its effectiveness. "The theater is not all pats on the back," says Chita...
...Gotta Have a Gimmick number from Gypsy. While the performers dance as brilliantly as one would expect from disciples of Robbins, most can't act very well, and there is not one striking singer in the entire company. The most problematic is Robert + La Fosse, a New York City Ballet star who moves gloriously but whose facial expression seems limited to a scowl and a simpering grin. Jason Alexander, who serves as narrator and plays seven characters, has wit, charm and the requisite razzmatazz -- his parts in Forum and Fiddler were played by Zero Mostel -- but lacks the star attribute...