"Just to Be , and Dance ": Jerome Robbins, J. S. Bach, and Late Style

Abstract

Abstract: Jerome Robbins (1918–1998), known as the first important American-born ballet choreographer, set over sixty ballets and numerous pieces for Broadway during his lifetime. His success can be attributed not only to his assimilation of different choreographic styles, but also to his attentiveness to the music. He was equally adept at setting a wide variety of musical styles, ranging from Frédéric Chopin (viz., The Concert 1956), Leonard Bernstein (viz., West Side Story 1957), and J. S. Bach (viz., The Goldberg Variations 1971) to Alban Berg (viz., In Memory Of … 1985). If he excelled at realistic character portrayals in some settings, in others he created abstract visual realizations of the music. Although Robbins choreographed many musical styles throughout his career, he developed a special affinity for the music of Bach at the end of his life. It is notable that his final three new choreographies were all based on the music of Bach: A Suite of Dances (1994); Two& Three-Part Inventions (1994); and Brandenburg (1997). Moreover, Bach's music was the last that he heard before he died; the soft strains of a recording of Bach's French Suites reportedly filled the air as Robbins lay dying at his house on 81st Street in New York in 1998. Based on recordings, letters, essays, and other choreographic sketches, some unpublished, this essay examines Robbins's littlediscussed late Bach settings in relation to concepts of Late Style. While Robbins's settings of three final pieces by Bach might not be summative—that is, they might not be as epic, lengthy, and encyclopedic as his The Goldberg Variations from 1971—they can be seen as synthesizing a lifetime of choreographic styles, including ballet, modern dance, theater, and folk. Since they were all abstract realizations of Bach's music through movement, as opposed to narrative settings, Bach's music seems directly to have inspired Robbins's contrapuntal choreography. In turning to Bach for his final creative projects, Robbins was thus participating in certain ways of thinking about art that Edward Said has claimed can be associated with artistic Late Style, including counterpoint and fragmentation. In addition, aspects of the rhythmic energy and stylistic pluralism so central to Bach's music became muses for Robbins's multi-stylistic choreographies late in life, even as he displayed both nostalgia for the past and a newfound interest in youth and youthfulness. In drawing connections among the last works of Robbins, the music of Bach, and theories of Late Style, this essay provides one of the first explorations of concepts of Late Style in relation to choreography, an art form in which the aging body and the artistic work are closely linked. In addition, it contributes new knowledge not only about the late choreographies of Robbins, but also about movement responses to Bach's music, and ways in which Bach reception has intersected with characteristics of Late Style.