A Choreographer in Words

PW: You're a renowned dance critic with a number of books to your name. How did the idea for this book, Jerome Robbins [click here to read the review], come about?

Deborah Jowitt: A close friend of Jerry's and one of his literary executors called me and said, "Do you have any idea how much Jerry liked your writing?" And I said, "Not really." [laughs] He basically said that if I agreed, they would give me complete access to Robbins's archives, his private letters, journals — everything.

PW: You're quoted as saying you felt like a "sleuth" going through his papers. Were there any surprises?

DJ: There were delicious things that came out. I was looking through one box and found an audio tape. It was a recording of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim singing the songs for The Exception and the Rule. To find this tape and hear these voices was amazing.

PW: How would you describe the relationship Robbins had with George Balanchine?

DJ: Robbins admired Balanchine tremendously; he considered him a mentor. In Robbins's early journal entries and stories, he doesn't rave about Balanchine, but later he talks about wanting to sit in on Balanchine's rehearsals. In his relationship with Balanchine, there was a combination of awe and a little bit of jealousy, over [the ballerina Tanaquil] Le Clerqc, whom Robbins was crazy about, and about their reputations.

PW: Do you think he ever came to terms with testifying to the House Committee on Un-American Activities?

DJ: Never totally. He said something like, "It didn't come out the way I thought, but at least it's out and I'll move on." But I don't think he could ever deal with it fully.

PW: What do you think of the state of the Robbins repertory eight years after his death?

DJ: Well, Robbins cared a great deal about posterity, while Balanchine said he didn't. But Robbins had a very different, type A personality. He passed on his perfectionism to the people he chose to be his ballet masters. And he left them money in his will, not as a bribe, but an appreciation for how well they understood his work.

PW: The characters in Balanchine's works are adults, while in Robbins's musicals and ballets, they're always young.

DJ: I think Robbins had a thing about youth. He was young when he started; he admired youth. In some senses, he was very youthful himself. He retained a lively curiosity and was interested in things around him. He retained an excitement about things he saw; there was definitely a kind of boyishness about him. And maybe there was in his work a sort of nostalgia for the youth he never really had.

PW: Did Simon & Schuster ask you to do the book, or did you approach them?

DJ: My agent, Robert Cornfield, sent the book around to a number of publishers, and Simon & Schuster put in a bid for it.