Jerome Robbins was born Jerome Wilson rabinowitz , in October 11 , 1918
he was born one month before the end of world war 1 , in a maternity hospital owned by jews. This was in the heart of Manhattan (east side)
The neighbourhood he was brought up in was populated by many immigrants.
Robbins started studying chemistry at New York university , however he had to drop out after only one year as he could not keep up the finances. Another reason was that he wanted to pursue his dance career.
He started his dance studies at the New Dance League/ Group, studying ballet with Antony Tudor and Eugene Loring.
In 1939 Jerome Robbins started dancing within productions on Broadway such as ‘Great Lady’, ‘The straw hat revue’ and ‘keep off the grass’.

Robbins started his earliest chorography at camp tamiment in Pennsylvania.
His choreography has many dramatic controversial ideas about war lynching and race.
These were strong issues that not a lot of choreographers would touch upon when creating dance or musical theatre.
However as it goes Robbins decided to take up ballet once again and had turned his back on musical theatre / theatre for a temporary period of time.
He then focused on joining the Ballet Theatre, which was then later named the American Ballet theatre. Jerome Robbins was a up and coming soloist with the company he was highly noticed for his performing roles as Hermes in Helen of Troy (19th April 1943) , the Moor in Petrouchka(1947) and Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet (April 6th 1943).
A year after this Robbins choreographed and performed , which was a great challenge in Fancy Free , this was biased on the liberty of sailors, this was performed as part of the Ballet Theatre in 1944.
He then went on to choreograph On the town later that year which was a musical which had many inperations from Fancy Free.
This performance was what lunched his Broadway career.