Among his numerous stage productions were On the Town, Peter Pan, High Button Shoes, The King and I, The Pajama Game, Bells Are Ringing, West Side Story, Gypsy, and Fiddler on the Roof.

Robbins began studying modern dance in high school with Alys [CK] Bentley, who encouraged her pupils to improvise steps to music.

While a member of Sandor's company Robbins made his stage debut with the Yiddish Art Theater, in a small role in The Brothers Ashkenazi.

In 1937 Robbins made the first of many appearances as a dancer at Camp Tamiment, a resort in the Poconos known for its weekly Broadway-style revues; and he began dancing in the choruses of Broadway shows, including Great Lady and Keep Off the Grass, both choreographed by George Balanchine.

Robbins had also begun creating dances for Tamiment's Revues, some of them comic (featuring the talents of Imogene Coca and Carol Channing) and some dramatic, topical, and controversial.

From 1941 through 1944, Robbins was a soloist with the company, attracting notice for his performance as Hermes in Helen of Troy, the title role in Petrouchka, the Youth in Agnes de Mille's Three Virgins and a Devil, and Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet; he also came under the influence of the choreographers Michel Fokine, Antony Tudor, and George Balanchine.

Robbins said in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor: "After seeing ... Fleet's In, which I inwardly rejected though it gave me the idea of doing the ballet, I watched sailors, and girls, too, all over town."

Later that year, Robbins conceived and choreographed On the Town (1944), a musical partly inspired by Fancy Free, which effectively launched his Broadway career.

The book and lyrics were written by a team that Robbins would work with again, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and the director was the Broadway legend George Abbott.

Because Robbins, as choreographer, insisted that his chorus reflect the racial diversity of a New York City crowd, On the Town broke the color bar on Broadway for the first time.

During rehearsals for it, an incident happened that became a part of Robbins – and Broadway – lore: the choreographer, preoccupied by giving directions to the dancers, backed up onstage until he fell into the orchestra pit.

[9] Two years later, Robbins received plaudits for his humorous Mack Sennett ballet, High Button Shoes (1947), and won his first Tony Award for choreography.

[11] In 1954, Robbins collaborated with George Abbott on The Pajama Game (1954), which launched the career of Shirley MacLaine, and created, choreographed, and directed the Mary Martin vehicle, Peter Pan (which he re-staged for an Emmy Award-winning television special in 1955, earning himself a nomination for best choreography).

To help the young cast grow into their roles, Robbins did not allow those playing members of opposite gangs (Jets and Sharks) to mix during the rehearsal process.

In 1956 Robbins's muse, Tanaquil LeClercq, contracted polio and was paralyzed; for the next decade Robbins largely withdrew from his activities at New York City Ballet, but he established his own small dance company, Ballets USA, which premiered at the inaugural season of Gian Carlo Menotti's Festival of the Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy in June 1958, toured Europe and the US under the auspices of the State Department, and appeared on television on The Ed Sullivan Show.

The production ran over a year off-Broadway and was transferred to Broadway for a short run in 1963, after which Robbins directed Anne Bancroft in a revival of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children.

In 1962, he saved A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), a musical farce starring Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford, David Burns, and John Carradine.

Sondheim wrote and Robbins staged an entirely new opening number, "Comedy Tonight", which explained to the audience what was to follow, and the show played successfully from then on.

The latter led to his creating the anthology show Jerome Robbins' Broadway in 1989 which recreated the most successful production numbers from his 50-plus year career.

Following a bicycle accident in 1990 and heart-valve surgery in 1994, in 1996 he began showing signs of a form of Parkinson's disease, and his hearing was quickly deteriorating.

Robbins had romantic relationships with a number of people, including Montgomery Clift, Nora Kaye, Buzz Miller, and Jess Gerstein.

The prizes should "lean toward the arts of dance..." The first two Jerome Robbins Awards were bestowed in 2003 to New York City Ballet and to lighting designer Jennifer Tipton.