Afternoon Of A Faun
Choreography: Jerome Robbins
Music: Claude Debussy
Staged By: Francisco Moncion
Set Design: Jean Rosenthal
Costume Design: Irene Sharaff

Jerome Robbin's Afternoon of a Faun premiered on May 14, 1953, at the New York City Ballet.  The work has continued to win audience and critical acclaim in the thirty years since, it's enduring appeal attributable to Robbin's genius for uniting subtle lyricism with proactive dramatic invention.  He was not, however, the first choreographer to see the promise in Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune. 

Vaslav Nijinsky's ballet of 1912 was also set to the Debussy work, considered by many to have been the composition that inaugurated modern music.  But though both ballets find beginning in the Mallarme poem, and the Debussy music which was written for it, and both are predicated upon a stylized conceit, the similarities are, in fact, slight. 

For Nijinsky, the conceit/device is dance as two-dimensional imitation of the figures on ancient Greek vases.  For Robbins, the conceit hangs on the mirrored fourth wall (the audience)…the dancers see themselves, and each other, only in reflection.  But Robbin's Faun is clearly beyond derivative; it is his own brilliant and original conception.  The ballet is about dancers, a favorite device of the choreographer.  Francisco Moncion, for whom, with Tanaquil LeClercq, the work was originally choreographed, set Robbin's choreography for the Kansas City company.

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