Dance maven’s letters delightful reading

If you are a ballet buff, musical-theater maven or film fan, you are likely to have encountered the works of Jerome Robbins.

The native New Yorker (1918-1998) first set out to have a career as a dancer, but he won widespread fame as a behind-the-scenes force.

In addition to choreographing numerous ballets, including “Fancy Free,” Robbins served as a prizewinning director of numerous musicals, including “Bells Are Ringing” and “Peter Pan.” After he helped hatch the idea for “West Side Story,” he co-directed the noted film adaptation with Natalie Wood.

Robbins was not known for talking about himself or his work, though. “For someone who dealt in the kinetic and the visual … it seems logical that being a wordsmith might not be in

• “Jerome Robbins, by Himself: Selections from His Letters, Journals, Drawings, Photographs and an Unfinished Memoir” (Knopf, 430 pages, $40) edited and with commentary by Amanda Vaill

his job description or his skill set,” writes Amanda Vaill, the editor of a new volume of Robbins’ writings.

Yet it turns out that Robbins had a gift for gab.

While researching her earlier biography of Robbins, Vaill realized that letters, notes and journal entries poured out of him. “He wrote about his identity (artistic and sexual), his background, his aspirations, his conflicts,” Vaill notes. “He wrote to, and about, his family, his lovers, and his friends and associates.”

Not that Robbins harbored illusions that he was a refined writer. “First of all,” he wrote composer Ned Rorem in a letter included here, “I’m a god awful typist, and you will find more mistakes in English than you ever did in my French.” Vaill calls him “a notoriously erratic speller” who sometimes misused words.

What Robbins’ writings lack in spit and polish, they make up for in candor.

Robbins’ earliest aspirations are recorded in a 1939 journal entry in which he described his love of dance in spiritual terms. “My classes shall be my daily worship and workshop,” he wrote. “Every moment shall be devoted to these purposes.”

Indeed, Robbins pursued career opportunities with a kind of religious fervor. His correspondents, among them

Leonard Bernstein, Ingmar Bergman and Mary Martin, attest to his workaholic lifestyle.

Other gems include a detailed outline for “Fancy Free,” as well as a journal entry describing the fits and starts in which the ballet was born. “6 hours, nothing accomplished. Worked like hell — lifts, etc. — till both so exhausted,” Robbins wrote, referring to cast members.

The centerpiece of the book is a series of letters Robbins wrote to ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq, whose dancing was stopped in its tracks when she received a diagnosis of polio. Robbins, whose love affairs included those with men and women, was so devoted to Le Clercq that he cast himself as her chief consoler during her recuperation.

Like much of the fascinating material gathered here, these letters are chatty, empathetic and endearing.

tonguetteauthor2@aol.com