Jerome Robbins' 'Fancy Free' dazzles with its timeless introspection

Last season Jerome Robbins' dreamy "In the Night," set to various Chopin nocturnes, entered Pacific Northwest Ballet's repertory. Opening its 2006-07 subscription series is the Seattle premiere of one of the choreographer's most famous works -- "Fancy Free."

"It is a timeless piece," says Judith Fugate, former dancer at New York City Ballet, who stages the ballets of Robbins and George Balanchine. "It depicts the sometimes dazzling experience of people seeing New York for the first time." In the ballet, they are three sailors just off their ship.

"The city has changed but the situation hasn't," she says. "You can still see the amazed look on their faces. 'Fancy Free' has not been a piece non-American companies have danced a lot. I think they are afraid the work might not fly with their dancers or audiences. It is so American. An exception are the Cubans at Miami City Ballet, who were sensational when they danced it."

Balanchine, born in Russia, could be "American" because he was so observant and able to translate what was around him into movement. Robbins was American by birth and attitude. "He moves with American deliberateness," wrote the dance critic Edwin Denby of a performance of Robbins in the early 1940s. "So Robbins on the stage, by being very natural, looks different enough to be a god; and that a god should be just like someone you see any day on the street is a nice joke." "Fancy Free" was premiered by Ballet Theatre (now American Ballet Theatre) at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1944. Its exact origins are somewhat inexact, Fugate points out. In her 2004 superb biography, "Jerome Robbins," dance critic Deborah Jowitt goes on at some length in an attempt to trace the ballet's beginnings. Paul Cadmus' vivid portrayal of sailors' lusty behavior on shore leave might have been a spark to Robbins' imagination. "Sailors were everywhere in New York," she notes, and Robbins often saw them, walking through Times Square on his way to the Metropolitan Opera House.

" ... he noticed that they often sauntered along in threes, full of bravado, grasping at pleasure before being shipped out to possible death. ... For a choreographer, there was something particularly alluring about the topic of sailors on leave. Their joking camaraderie, their rolling gait, their tight uniforms and rakish caps all fostered an image of cockiness, of sexuality ready to bust out."

"Fancy Free," was Robbins' first ballet, created when he was 24. It was an instant success, transformed later that year into the musical "On the Town." Not only did Robbins emerge as a major talent, so did Leonard Bernstein, who wrote the music, and Oliver Smith, who did the decor. Robbins danced in the premiere with Janet Reed, who later joined New York City Ballet and, in 1972, became the founding artistic director of PNB and head of its school.

The ballet's characters are few: three sailors just off their ship looking for a little bit of love on the streets of New York. They pick up two girls, inevitably argue over them, and then dance to show off.

"Person to person relationships on stage were very important to Jerry," says Fugate. "Even in plotless ballets, Jerry makes sure the dancers react to one another. Balanchine wasn't so interested in that. Jerry was very good at creating characters and bringing out their personalities."

Robbins worked and reworked the scenario for "Fancy Free," Jowitt wrote. "(It) ... was hammered out coast to coast on stages, in rehearsal studios, in hotel lobbies, in nightclubs, during daytime hours, and on trains."

Reed recalled that street life became a test ground for Robbins' ideas. "(We) were in Bloomington, Ind., walking down the street on the way to the theater, and Jerry said, 'I wonder what would happen if -- ' and he described the girl running and suddenly jumping and the boy catching her. He just talked his image of it as we were walking. I let him walk on ahead a little ways and I said, 'You mean like this?' and I ran down the street and jumped at him. And he had to drop his bag to catch me. That's in the pas de deux we did together. ... If we were on a train and we looked out a window and saw planes flying in formation, Jerry used it in the ballet. Everything he saw that he could use, he did."

The cast members were his friends, according to Jowitt, "and he built not only on their particular dancerly strengths but on how he saw them as people."

"(I) never really thought of that girl (her role) as anyone but myself," said Reed.

Although technical prowress, like speed, is required in "Fancy Free," says Fugate, "the ballet is not driven by technique. It is driven by character, and it makes such a difference."

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