The Ballet that Became a Musical Comedy

Three sailors “on the town” at the beginning of “Fancy Free” (screen shot from the video being discussed)

In my last article about Jerome Robbins, I briefly cited “Fancy Free,” one of his creations for American Ballet Theatre prior to his move to the New York City Ballet (NYCB). “Fancy Free” would subsequently metamorphose into the Broadway musical On the Town. Both the ballet and the musical had music by Leonard Bernstein. However, while “Fancy Free” was a single-scene half-hour ballet involving six dancers and one mimed role, On the Town was a full-evening two-act show with a far more elaborate plot developed by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, which subsequently found its way to realization as an MGM musical film.

Each of the two versions has its own virtues. The core of “Fancy Free” involves three sailors on shore leave that compete for the attention of two women. In On the Town, on the other hand, each sailor is paired with a women that complements his character; and the six of them go on adventures throughout New York City in different combinations, all over the course of 24 hours. If the narrative is a bit on the silly side, it is consistently elevated by the sharp witticisms of Comden and Green.

When one watches “Fancy Free,” on the other hand, all verbal exchanges take place only in the mind of the observer. Nevertheless, Robbins is particularly skilled at endowing each of the sailors with his own set of personality traits. (Robbins himself danced one of those roles at the premiere performance.) Furthermore, the interactions between the men and the women are very much part of a distant past (1944) and will probably reflect poorly on more recent norms of male-female encounters and relationships. Ironically, it will probably strike many as easier to accept the personality traits of the characters in The Sleeping Beauty than the stereotyped behaviors in “Fancy Free.”

Nevertheless, “Fancy Free” definitely has a firm place in the overall history of American ballet; and the YouTube video of a 1986 performance by NYCB provides a valuable perspective on not only a brasher side of American stylistic practices but also Robbins’ approach to ballet narrative.