Evoking the Great White Way, Fancy Free is the precursor to Broadway’s On the Town, presenting three sailors and their escapades on shore leave in Manhattan.

In 1944, Jerome Robbins — then a young dancer with Ballet Theatre (now American Ballet Theatre)— choreographed his first ballet, a collaboration with up-and-coming composer Leonard Bernstein. The two wanted to bring a modern American sensibility to ballet, and they hit on the perfect concept: sailors on shore leave in New York City, a common sight in those days. The premiere performance of Fancy Free has become legendary, with two dozen curtain calls for the stunned cast, composer, and choreographer, and raves from the bowled-over critics.

Fancy Free was the inspiration for a full-length musical, On the Town, that was also a great success, and Robbins and Bernstein went on to collaborate on another Broadway classic, West Side Story. Of course, each man had many subsequent successes; Bernstein became the music director of the New York Philharmonic and a prolific composer and conductor, and Robbins was the creative force behind many enduring Broadway hits, as well as the choreographer of some of New York City Ballet’s core works. But it was Fancy Free that put Robbins on the map as someone who had a clear eye for creating compelling movement, a deft hand at telling a story, and a creative vision that was unique in the world of theater.

Exploring his fascination with the music of Chopin, Robbins created three vastly contrasting sets of lovers, from innocent to impetuous, who meet beneath a midnight sky.

After the enormous popularity of Dances at a Gathering in 1969, Jerome Robbins built on his love affair with Chopin’s piano works with In the Night.  While the earlier ballet primarily uses mazurkas, waltzes, and études, In the Night, which premiered in 1970, conjures up a post-dusk scenario to four of the composer’s nocturnes. Choreographed for three couples of distinct personality, the ballet uses the music as a jumping-off point to explore subtle dance dramas. The Nocturne Op. 27, No. 1 takes on a stately quality before melting into lyricism. Nocturnes Op. 55, No. 1 and No. 2 are, respectively, bittersweet, and tempestuous in their melodies. The final piece, Nocturne Op. 9, No. 2 uses the rondo form, but in a tender, almost ethereal andante.

This audience favorite translates the seasons into frosty flirtation, springtime awakening, sultry revelry, and autumnal bacchanal, all set to Verdi’s vibrant melodies.

When opera was presented in Paris in the late nineteenth century, the composer was obliged to include a ballet at the beginning of the third act, whether or not it had anything to do with the plot of the opera. Usually it didn't, but it gave the Jockey Club, a group of wealthy subscribers, a chance to look over their favorite beautiful ladies of the ballet at a convenient time of the evening, and these patrons were attentively in their seats for the ballet, if not for the rest of the opera. The tradition of the third act divertissement was so firmly established that when Wagner put his Venusburg ballet at the very beginning of Act I of Tannhäuser, there were such forcible protests by the Jockey Club that the whole opera was nearly withdrawn.

Fortunately for us, Verdi was less revolutionary about Parisian conventions and composed many third-act opera ballets. Although seldom included in today’s productions, they contain some of the most delightful dance music of the period. For I Vespri Siciliani, he devised a ballet called The Four Seasons. His libretto called for Janus, the God of New Year, to inaugurate a series of dances by each of the seasons in turn. Verdi’s notes suggest such notions as ballerinas warming themselves in Winter by dancing, Spring bringing on warm breezes, indolent Summer ladies being surprised by an Autumnal faun, etc. The present ballet follows his general plan. The original score is augmented by a few selections of his ballet music from I Lombardi and Il Trovatore.

– Jerome Robbins, 1979