Somewhere The Life of Jerome Robbins

From the author of the acclaimedEverybody Was So Young, the definitive and major biography of the great choreographer and Broadway legend Jerome Robbins To some, Jerome Robbins was a demanding perfectionist, a driven taskmaster, a theatrical visionary; to others, he was a loyal friend, a supportive mentor, a generous and entertaining companion and colleague. Born Jerome Rabinowitz in New York City in 1918, Jerome Robbins repudiated his Jewish roots along with his name only to reclaim them with his triumphant staging ofFiddler on the Roof. A self-proclaimed homosexual, he had romances or relationships with both men and women, some famouslike Montgomery Clift and Natalie Woodsome less so. A resolutely unpolitical man, he was forced to testify before Congress at the height of anti-Communist hysteria. A consummate entertainer, he could be paralyzed by shyness; nearly infallible professionally, he was conflicted, vulnerable, and torn by self-doubt. Guarded and adamantly private, he was an inveterate and painfully honest journal writer who confided his innermost thoughts and aspirations to a remarkable series of diaries and memoirs. With ballets likeDances at a Gathering,Afternoon of a Faun, andThe Concert,he humanized neoclassical dance; with musicals likeOn the Town,Gypsy, andWest Side Story, he changed the face of theater in America. In the pages of this definitive biography, Amanda Vaill takes full measure of the complicated, contradictory genius who was Jerome Robbins. She re-creates his childhood as the only son of Russian Jewish immigrants; his apprenticeship as a dancer and Broadway chorus gypsy; his explosion into prominence at the age of twenty-five with the balletFancy Freeand its Broadway incarnation,On the Town; and his years of creative dominance in both theater and dance. She brings to life his colleagues and friendsfrom Leonard Bernstein and George Balanchine to Robert Wilson and Robert Gravesand his loves and lovers. And she tells the full story behind some of Robbins's most difficult episodes, such as his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee and his firing from the film version ofWest Side Story. Drawing on thousands of pages of documents from Robbins's personal and professional papers, to which she was granted unfettered access, as well as on other archives and hundreds of interviews,Somewhereis a riveting narrative of a life lived onstage, offstage, and backstage. It is also an accomplished work of criticism and social history that chronicles one man's phenomenal career and places it squarely in the cultural ferment of a time when New York City was truly "a helluva town."