Essay On Jerome Robbins

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Audience members want to be entertained when they go to see shows and movies. Essentially why these activities are considered entertainment. Throughout the twentieth century, going to see musicals, plays, films, and ballets was all the rage. A famous name that came across in musicals during this time period was Jerome Robbins. As a dancer and choreographer, he received praise for his ballet piece, “Fancy Free”, and some of his contributions on Broadway such as West Side Story, Peter Pan, Miss Liberty and Billion Dollar Baby (Muhlstein). When I first heard of Robbins, I immediately searched his name on YouTube and came across one of his ballet pieces, “Concerto”. The humor added into this performance caught me off guard since ballet is usually a more serious type of dance. However, the …show more content…

However, once the class got to the jumping and actual dancing part of the class, Jerome was enjoying himself more. Robbins commented on his first dance class, “What it gave me immediately was the absolute freedom to make up my own dances with our inhibition or doubt” (Vaill 25-26). With not growing up as a wealthy family, Robbins had to find an after school job to be able to pay for dance lessons if he wanted to continue dancing. After high school, Robbins wished to go to college and study journalism, but his parents were not able to afford the expenses of college tuition. Even his sister Sonia began working right after graduating high school. However, Robbins’ family found the money to send him off to New York University to study Chemistry, which his family believed would actually give him a job to support himself. Sadly, by his second semester of his freshman year, the Depression had hit and his family could no longer support his college tuition. Yet again, he had to seek employment, but this time he was looking for an occupation in show

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