This is a fascinating portrait of an agile youth, Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz, who spent his life trying to dance away from himself. A socialist, Jew, and homosexual, he never liked any of the labels, so he changed his name, married a woman, and “named names” when he testified to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Robbins life was filled with contradictions; he proposed to Nora Kaye while living with his gay partner and, though he ran from his Jewish heritage, he embraced the shtetl life in his masterpiece Fiddler on the Roof.

Amanda Vaill quotes liberally from his diaries and letters to paint this picture of a mercurial genius, tyrant and sadist. Like a shark, Robbins was relentlessly on the move. From his early life as a toomler in the Catskills, to his last project, an anthology show titled: Jerome Robbins' Broadway in 1989, he never slowed down. Like most self-centered artists, he would do anything to achieve his next vision, and his life was littered with the hopes and feelings of other people. His auditions were famously long and grueling, so that he could drag as much work as possible out of dancers before putting them on the payroll.