“Jerome Robbins is the great subject of American theatrical biography… and Amanda Vaill has done him justice. I can’t think of a better full-length portrait of an American choreographer or director, and I can’t imagine a better book about Robbins ever being written.” Terry Teachout, chief drama critic, The Wall Street Journal
Somewhere
The Life of Jerome Robbins
Jerome Robbins changed the face of theater in America, making ballets, like Fancy Free and Dances at a Gathering, that reflected (as he said) “the way we dance today and how we are,” and creating musicals, such as West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof, whose text, music, and movement were conceived as an organic whole, whose aim was not so much to entertain as to transfigure.
In a definitive and deeply researched biography, Amanda Vaill at last takes full measure of this complicated, contradictory genius. She recreates his Jewish immigrant childhood, his meteoric ascent, his collaborations and conflicts with George Balanchine, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Robert Wilson, and others, his love affairs with men and women, the testimony he gave to the House Un-American Affairs Committee that haunted him for decades. But Somewhere is more than 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 man’s phenomenal career and places it squarely in the cultural ferment of a time when New York City was (as Robbins’s first Broadway show put it) “a helluva town.” ▣
Praise for Somewhere
“An epic biography — remarkable in scope and meticulous in detail.” Patricia Bosworth, author of Montgomery Clift and Diane Arbus: A Biography
“Vaill has done a heroic amount of research and every bit of it shows… Her pages pop with pithy backstage gossip. Posthumously, up in heaven where he surely is, Robbins should be proud to have inspired such [a] fine testament to his diverse art and complex life.” John Rockwell, New York Times Book Review
“[A] great subject for a biography. Robbins’ contradictions, mysteries, achievements, failures and vision add up to a life worth visiting and revisiting… [and] Vaill proves a seductive storyteller, a penetrating psychologist, a compelling analyst of Robbins’s choreography.” Sid Smith, Chicago Tribune Book World
“Other books about Robbins give you the facts about the innumerable theater and ballet projects that make him a central figure in the history of 20th century theatrical dance. But Vaill has a gift for storytelling, for context, that transforms the production credits and backstage anecdotes into tightly focused dramatic episodes in the life of a man always fiercely self-protective.” Lewis Segal, Los Angeles Times
“A critically sophisticated biography that’s as compulsively readable as a novel… The book is essential reading for lovers of theater and dance. [Vaill] writes with both passion and compassion.” Publishers Weekly
“Witty, stylishly written… Vaill discusses [Robbins’s] complicated libidinal life with great sensitivity. More important, she has a commanding view of his work both in the theater and the more abstract world of the ballet. [And] her account of his final years is deeply moving.” Howard Kissel, New York Daily News
“A dramatic, incremental revelation of the kind we expect in novels of a high order… an exquisitely polished performance.” Carl Rollyson, The New York Sun
“Massive and magnetic… spills nearly every bean about the choreographer’s private life that he had always tried so hard to hoard. Vaill has created a page-turner.” Mindy Aloff, Washington Post Book World
“There have been many books about this famously difficult but brilliant director and dancemaker, but Vaill, a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award (Everybody Was So Young), has penned a massively researched and highly readable one, laced with a slew of well-chosen photographs that help capture the essence of Robbins’ work.” Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times
“This is the best book I’ve read about the theater since Moss Hart’s Act One. It’s the best book about the process of making art since Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit. And it’s the best book about the connection — always necessary, but often ignored — between the personal issues of a creator and the work that he/she produces.” Jesse Kornbluth, HeadButler.com
“A magnificent biography. Amanda Vaill gives us the depths and the highlights onstage and off; it’s a glory to behold.” Francis Mason, “The World of Dance,” WQXR-fm
“Superlative…a vivid account of a theatrical wizard.” Vogue
“Discerning, empathetic, and accessible.” Kirkus