Video: NYC Ballet's Bart Cook On Working With Jerome Robbins
Robbins' assistant recalls working with the famed choreographer.
By: Joshua Wright Jan. 22, 2024
Jerome Robbins' oeuvre is often lauded for evoking lived experience. In an all-new video, Bart Cook, former Principal Dancer and longtime assistant of Robbins, recalls an instance of the choreographer transfiguring "chaos to beauty" after an alarming freak occurrence on tour.
Cook studied with W. Christensen and at the School of American Ballet from 1970 and joined New York City Ballet in 1971, becoming a principal dancer in 1979.
Dancing with the company until 1993, he brought to life leading roles, originating parts in Robbins's Scherzo fantastique (1972), An Evening's Waltzes (1973), Dybbuk Variations (1974), and The Four Seasons (1979), and in Balanchine's Vienna Waltzes (1977).
In 1981 he became assistant ballet master of New York City Ballet, and following his retirement from the stage he worked for the Balanchine Trust, staging Balanchine's ballets.
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