What's OnAfternoon of a Faun

Afternoon of a Faun 1953

Choreographer Jerome Robbins
Music - Claude Debussy

American choreographer, Jerome Robbins is internationally renowned as much for his ballets created for the likes of New York City Ballet, Ballets USA and American Ballet Theatre as he is for his direction and choreography on a number of Broadway’s biggest hits, including On The Town and West Side Story, the latter of which he received two Academy Awards for in the 1960 film version.

Jerome Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun is a serenely sensual re-working of Vaslav Njinsky’s original 1912 ballet for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, which drew its inspiration from Stephane Mallarmes’ poem L’Apres midi d’un faune. In Robbins’ version the audience become voyeurs of a private encounter between two young dancers, one male, one female, who meet and practice in front of the mirror in an empty dance studio, absorbed in their own and in each others physicality, until a kiss breaks the spell.