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Other Dances

Choreography

Jerome Robbins

Composer

Frederic Chopin

Music

Mazurka, Op. 17, no. 4, 1832-1833; Mazurka, Op. 41, no. 3, 1839; Waltz, Op. 64, no. 3, 1847; Mazurka, Op. 63, no. 2, 1846; Mazurka Op. 33, no. 2, 1837-1838

Costume Design

Santo Loquasto

Lighting Design

Jennifer Tipton, recreated by Randall G. Chiarelli

Staging

Isabelle Guérin

Cast

2 dancers

Running Time

17 minutes

Premiere

May 9, 1976
Gala benefit for the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

PNB Premiere

September 21, 2018

The 2018 Pacific Northwest Ballet premiere of Jerome Robbins’ Other Dances is generously underwritten by Marcella McCaffray.

Other Dances was created especially for a gala benefit for the Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. The program notes for that occasion read:

“The title of this series of dances reflects their relationship to Jerome Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering. There was so much of Chopin’s music that Mr. Robbin’s wishes to choreograph that he used this opportunity to devise for Miss [Natalia] Makarova and Mr. [Mikhail] Baryshnikov these Other Dances—a waltz and four mazurkas.”

Notes courtesy of the Robbins Rights Trust.

Artist Biographies

Jennifer Tipton

Jennifer Tipton was born in Columbus, Ohio, and attended Cornell University. After graduation, she came to New York to study dance, and her interest in lighting began with a course in the subject at the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College. She has been awarded two Bessies and a Laurence Olivier Award for lighting dance; her work in that field includes pieces choreographed by Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jiří Kylián, Dana Reitz, Jerome Robbins, Paul Taylor, and Twyla Tharp, among many others. In 1991, she received a Dance Magazine Award and has been a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Theater Program Distinguished Artist Award and a grant in the National Theatre Artist Residency Program funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Her theater work has garnered a Joseph Jefferson Award, a Kudo, a Drama-Logue Award, two American Theatre Wing Awards, an Obie, two Drama Desk Awards, and two Tonys for The Cherry Orchard and Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. She was the recipient of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 2001 and the Jerome Robbins Prize in 2003. In 2008, she became a United States Artist “Gracie” Fellow and a MacArthur Fellow. Ms. Tipton is on the faculty at the Yale University School of Drama.

Jerome Robbins

Jerome Robbins (1918-1998) is world-renowned for his work as a choreographer of ballets as well as his work as a director and choreographer in theater, movies, and television. His Broadway shows include On the Town, Billion Dollar Baby, High Button Shoes, West Side Story, The King and I, Gypsy, Peter Pan, Miss Liberty, Call Me Madam, and Fiddler on the Roof. His last Broadway production in 1989, Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, won six Tony Awards, including best musical and best director.

Among the more than 60 ballets he created are Fancy Free, Afternoon of a Faun, The Concert, Dances At a Gathering, In the Night, In G Major, Other Dances, Glass Pieces and Ives, Songs, which are in the repertories of New York City Ballet and other major dance companies throughout the world. His last ballets include A Suite of Dances created for Mikhail Baryshnikov (1994), 2 & 3 Part Inventions (1994), West Side Story Suite (1995) and Brandenburg (1996).

In addition to two Academy Awards for the film West Side Story, Mr. Robbins received four Tony Awards, five Donaldson Awards, two Emmy Awards, the Screen Directors’ Guild Award, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Mr. Robbins was a 1981 Kennedy Center Honors Recipient and was awarded the French Chevalier dans l’Ordre National de la Legion d’Honneur.

Randall G. Chiarelli

Randall G. Chiarelli (1949-2024) devoted his career to lighting for dance, much of it at Pacific Northwest Ballet, and also for American Ballet Theatre, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, Houston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, among others. His many collaborators included choreographers Donald Byrd, Mark Dendy, Ronald Hynd, Kent Stowell, Susan Stroman, and Christopher Wheeldon. Chiarelli graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in painting and sculpture.

Santo Loquasto

Santo Loquasto is a Tony and Drama Desk award winning designer for dance, theater, and film. Twyla Tharp’s Push Comes to Shove marked the beginning of a long-term relationship with American Ballet Theatre. He also collaborated with choreographers Jerome Robbins, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Paul Taylor, Agnes de Mille, James Kudelka, and Mark Morris. For film, Mr. Loquasto has received Academy Award nominations for production design for Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway and Radio Days, and for costume design for Allen’s Zelig. Other film credits include Desperately Seeking Susan and Big.