Gershwin Piano Concerto
The Gershwin Piano Concerto is a ballet set to George Gershwin's 1925 Concerto in F, made for New York City Ballet by the company's ballet master Jerome Robbins and first given on February 4, 1982 at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center. It belongs to the run of Robbins works for NYCB that set concert music by American composers on a plotless, ensemble-driven stage, following the company's Balanchine-era model of dance built directly from a score rather than from a libretto.
What is danced
The source article does not describe the choreography in concrete terms — no step vocabulary, formation, or named variation is given. What survives in the text is a contemporary critical judgement: a New York Times reviewer called it 'a smashing success' and praised Robbins as 'a brilliant choreographer at his most complex, working on a startling level of formal ingenuity and also retaining his singular genius for capturing the essence of a national spirit.' That language points to intricate ensemble patterning built on the concerto's three movements and to an idiom read at the time as distinctly American, but it does not specify pointe work, partnering, or vocabulary, so no reliable claim about technique can be drawn from the article alone.
Context
By 1982 Robbins had spent more than a decade at New York City Ballet working alongside George Balanchine, and the company's house style of setting large-scale, plotless ballets directly to orchestral concert scores — rather than to commissioned theatrical narratives — was well established. A ballet built on a 1925 Gershwin concerto sits inside that tradition of choreographing American concert music for a classical company, continuing NYCB's long-standing interest in jazz-inflected American scores as material for plotless ballet.
How to watch it
Watch for how the choreography tracks the concerto's own three-movement structure rather than following any story, since the piece is plotless and driven by the music's form. The contemporary review's language about 'formal ingenuity' and 'national spirit' suggests attention is worth paying to how ensemble patterning and any American-inflected phrasing are laid over a classically trained company.
Credits
- composer: George Gershwin