Dance with Demons: The Life of Jerome Robbins

By: Greg Lawrence

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Synopsis: Dance with Demons is the first full biography of the celebrated choreographer/director of Broadway, ballet, and Hollywood - a man of towering achievement and extraordinary personal nightmares. For decades, he was one of the most commanding creative forces in America. His work on such shows as On the Town, The King and I, West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Gypsy, Peter Pan, and Jerome Robbins' Broadway earned him five Tony Awards and two Academy Awards. His brilliance with American Ballet Theatre and the New York City Ballet established him as one of the century's great choreographers. But when Jerome Robbins, ne Rabinowitz, died at the age of seventy-nine in 1998, he was a haunted man. All of his life, he had struggled with demons: his bisexuality, his ambivalence about his Judaism, his often bitter relationship with his parents, his betrayals of others during the McCarthy hearings, and a fear of failure that drove him to a perfectionism bordering on the sadistic. Dance with Demons is is the story that Robbins was unable to tell. Based on years of research and interviews with hundreds of Robbins's family, friends, and colleagues, it gives the full measure of both the artist and the man. Filled with stories and voices, it is a fascinating portrait of light and dark - like its subject, a work rich in complexity.