{"product_id":"somewhere-the-life-of-jerome-robbins-9780767904209","title":"Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the author of the acclaimed Everybody 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 of Fiddler 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 like Dances at a Gathering  Afternoon of a Faun  and The Concert  he humanized neoclassical dance; with musicals like On the Town  Gypsy  and West 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 ballet Fancy Free and 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 Robbinss most difficult episodes  such as his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee and his firing from the film version of West Side Story. Drawing on thousands of pages of documents from Robbinss personal and professional papers  to which she was granted unfettered access  as well as on other archives and hundreds of interviews  Somewhere is 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 mans phenomenal career and places it squarely in the cultural ferment of a time when New York City was truly a helluva town.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45118229577781,"sku":"ByrdShop_0767904206","price":21.25,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780767904209.jpg?v=1781682518","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/somewhere-the-life-of-jerome-robbins-9780767904209","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}