Dancers constantly swapped tales of high-handed behavior at rehearsals. “I know I’m difficult,” he told the cast of West Side Story.” I know I’m going to hurt your feelings. But that’s the way I am.” Painstaking to the point of mania, he often cast his ballets at the last minute, usually after trying out several dancers in each role. “His work has the primary thing in his life,” says Edwards Villella, who created major roles in Dancers at a Gathering and Watermill. “and anybody who was connected with it had to think in those terms too. It was life and blood and humanity, and everybody else was raw material for his genius,”
Robbins took his final curtain call in May, at opening night of the New York City Ballet’s revival of his Les Noces. The once vital choreographer had grown frail, but his snow-white beard still glowed like a beacon, and when the dance was over, he made his careful way to center stage, hobbled by age and illness but radiating undimmed authority. More than a few onlookers wept, knowing that the golden age of ballet---the starlit century of Sergei Diaghilev, Geprge Balanchine, Antony Tudor, Sir Frederick Ashton and Jerome Robbins—was drawing at last to a close.
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一个美国造就的天才 连载3 【优客】
舞蹈演员们经常在排练间歇的时候讨论他的专横之处。“我知道我很难相处”他对《西区故事》的全体演员说,”我知道我将伤害到你们的感情，但这就是我做事的方式 “ 他辛勤刻苦到了极点，直到每个角色被试演了几遍之后他才在最后一秒钟敲定演员。“在他的生活中工作是占主要地位的”曾经创作出《聚会上的舞蹈》和《水磨》主要角色的爱德华兹·维莱拉如此说道，并且任何与他有过工作接触的人也是这么认为的。工作是他的生命，是他的血液，是他的人生，而任何其他人都是他天才之路的踏脚石。
五月，纽约芭蕾舞剧团重新上演他的《婚礼》，在首演之夜，罗宾斯最后一次向观众谢幕。这位曾经辉煌无比的舞蹈大师如今已经年迈体虚，但是他那雪白的胡须却像灯塔一样闪闪发光。在舞蹈结束后，这位年迈的大师缓缓移向舞台中心，虽然身虚体衰但其身影依然散发着权威的光芒。很多观众都哭了，因为他们知道芭蕾舞的黄金年代---那个曾经涌现出赛格·佳吉列夫，乔治·巴兰钦，安东尼·都襗，弗莱德里克·阿诗通爵士和杰罗姆·罗宾斯等众多奇才的群星灿烂世纪终于正渐渐离他们远去。