NYCB Gives Wing to a Robbins Fest : The meticulous choreographer, at 71, displays 27 of his works at a New York celebration. His sense of invention never quits

Jerome Robbins came of artistic age during the ‘40s, when George Balanchine was active as founding father of ballet in America. Early in his dance career, which began in musical theater, Robbins attracted Balanchine’s attention. In 1949, the variously trained, New York-born dancer and aspiring choreographer joined Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, where he happily viewed the Russian-born ballet master as a kind of father figure.

Today, more than 40 years later, Robbins stands less as son of Balanchine and more as godfather of the American ballet his mentor so effectively championed.

The extent and nature of Robbins’ influence on City Ballet in particular and on contemporary American classicism in general, was substantially illustrated recently when the company where he has consistently, if not exclusively, worked, held “A Festival of Jerome Robbins’ Ballets.”

For two weeks an all-Robbins repertory was given: 27 ballets, plus one excerpt, arranged into nine different programs. All of the ballets were supervised and personally rehearsed by the legendarily meticulous master himself, who will be 72 in October.

Unlike “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway,” the fairly comprehensive retrospective of Robbins’ dance work for musical theater, this festival involved few reconstructions of works no longer in repertory. For his critically acclaimed 1989 Broadway extravaganza--20 shows documented in one two-act presentation--the ever-scrupulous Robbins worked for an unusually long preparation period, including 22 weeks of rehearsal. For this showing of ballets, largely taken from active roles, Robbins worked for about 12 weeks.

Still, even while creating a festival of mostly recent repertory, Robbins revealed his uncanny gift for arranging novel theatrical effect. This one-man show included multiple viewpoints from which to get a fresh take on one man’s influential aesthetic.

For chronological neatness, there was Robbins’ first ballet, “Fancy Free,” from 1944 for American Ballet Theatre, programmed back-to-back with his last, “Ives, Songs,” from 1988 for City Ballet.

For a range of experimentation, the schedule included another kind of yin and yang. At one end was the only full-scale reconstruction, that of the 1972 “Watermill,” an exploration of tableau-like, Asian theater effects, which hadn’t been performed since 1979. On the other side was “Brahms/Handel” (1984), the stirring and yeasty result of a rare collaboration between Robbins and another choreographer--in this case the unpredictable Twyla Tharp.

Enlivening the array of ballets were the dancers Robbins had specially chosen to give wing to his works. The range here was similar to the breadth of his choreography. At one side was the legendary Edward Villella, 53 years old and out of retirement especially for the revival of “Watermill.” Contrasting such senior artists were fresh-faced underlings, such as the young and gifted Brian Reeder and the still-younger and prodigiously talented Ethan Stiefel.

The overall shape of the event itself was appealingly clean and clear. Its proceedings were notably free of special-event excesses such as banners, posters, speeches, and other extra-dance activity. Only with the final performance last Sunday night did a certain party atmosphere arise to cap two weeks of regular Robbins dancing with two hours of gala Robbins dancing.

This closing affair included guest casts from two other ballet companies performing two works not seen elsewhere in the Festival. Three stellar couples from the Paris Opera Ballet danced “In the Night,” a rapturously impassioned and intense reading of some Chopin nocturnes. A contingent from American Ballet Theatre lead an excerpt from “Les Noces,” the choreographer’s foot-pounding staging of one of Igor Stravinsky’s most percussive cantatas.

For the record, both these guest groups added excitement and richness to the festival. Both the Paris and Ballet Theatre dancers, particularly the men, unsparingly committed themselves to Robbins’ inventions. They made up in theatrical impact what they sometimes lacked in technical finesse. As they threw themselves into their material, you could almost hear their host/taskmaster prodding, as he is sometimes said to do at his infamous rehearsals: “Come on, baby, give it to me!”

Essentially, however, it was in the day-to-day course of these events that the special colors, connections and consistencies of Robbins’ repertory shone most naturally.

Bubbling to the surface were flashes of Robbins’ trademarks. The dominance in his work, for instance, of the art of the male dancer. Robbins came into Balanchine’s European world of ballet--where “Woman” is supreme and “Man is to serve”--as an American familiar with musical theater--where “boy meets girl.”

Robbins’ “boys” have a way--even while being ever-deferential to their “girls”--of stealing the show. And they did so in almost half of the 27 works.

While the repertory certainly had its share of women’s parts and feminine force, such dimensions remain secondary in Robbins’ canon. If there was a general weakness to the casting of these ballets, it was his selection of ballerinas.

The generally uneasy showing made by “Dances at a Gathering,” the landmark Chopin ballet that brought Robbins back to City Ballet and back to classical choreography in 1969, was most weak in ballerina dimension.

The ballerinas in today’s cast of “Dances” and in related works, who had substantial Balanchine tutelage to their credit, were almost all past peak form. Those who didn’t were strikingly of another and lesser dimension.

Thinking of its origin, when Robbins had choice pick of the female artists Balanchine was so deft at creating, gave one pause. Perhaps now that the master-teacher who died in 1983 is no longer turning out ballerinas--Robbins has never seen himself as a pedagogue--the eagle-eyed dance-maker finds less and less inspiration.

However, even given the isolated instances of less-than-rigorous individual dancers, these performances were fortified by theatrical effects so savvy, no work fell utterly flat. Robbins-the-showman has given ballet its very own version, in almost infinite variety, of the musical theater’s “button”--that definite sign, by way of some kind of flourish, to tell the audience it’s time to applaud. For example, the high-flown lift that frequently ends a Robbins pas de deux: “Dances at a Gathering” and “In the Night” are mini-texts on the subject.

If Robbins’ vision can be said to have something of a theme, these samplings would suggest “theme and variations”--Robbins’ sense of invention is not only keen, it just doesn’t quit. See the variations on seating mishaps that take place around a table of beers as the three gobs in “Fancy Free” try to put the make on their none-too-easily-impressed dates. Or watch the variety of umbrella openings and closings in the almost-Zen landscape of strolling bumbershootists in “The Concert.” Or, note the continual adjustments of similar pose and gesture that make up the women’s pas de quatre in “Moves.” Here, in this 1959 study of dancing in silence, lie the fertile seeds that gave rise to the 1984 “Antique Epigraphs,” with its less succinct and more labored conceit for eight women, relentlessly posturing a la Grecque.

As our ballet’s clever and loyal godfather, Robbins has, true to tradition, been a compelling storyteller. Early in his career, when a libretto was standard ballet procedure, Robbins told his stories plainly but poetically. Later on, in good part due to the lessons and convictions of Balanchine, the libretto and its predetermined storyline were no longer required. This freedom has led willy-nilly to some free-license floundering and unfocused theatrics around the dance world. Robbins, however, took the cue. He refined his poetic work by inventing more with academic dance than with character gesture. In the process, he continued to work for character, without creating characters.

In “Fancy Free,” Robbins used the pretext of three sailors showing off to create three male variations out of classical dance material. In “Ives, Songs” he used the pretext of dance set to compositions by Charles Ives to create a portfolio of vignettes depicting early 20th Century Americana.

The more things change, the more Jerome Robbins remains the same.