Fiddler on the Roof is a musical that thrusts the generational conflict regarding time-held religious and cultural traditions front and center stage. The storyline about Jewish settlers living in a small village in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century is based on the stories of Sholom Aleichem. It was the acclaimed Tony Award-winning director and choreographer Jerome Robbins who saw the universal appeal of this simple tale about Tevye, a poor milkman, struggling to maintain the customs and beliefs passed down within family and community from one generation to the next.

Robbins was born Jerome Rabinowitz in New York to Russian Jewish parents who fled to America to escape the pogroms. Although he rejected Judaism in his youth and distanced himself further from his heritage by changing his surname, in midlife Robbins fought to produce Fiddler on the Roof in part to honor his family and their history.

The original production opened on Broadway in 1964. It was the show that the 60's Broadway clique said would never be of interest to mass audiences yet it was the first show to surpass 3,000 performances and became the longest running musical for 10 years — until Grease broke its record. And contrary to the naysayers, Fiddler on the Roof was critically acclaimed and received 10 Tony Award nominations winning nine including Best Musical, Best Book for a Musical, Best Score, and Best direction and Choreography for Jerome Robbins. A successful film adaptation came in 1971, followed by four Broadway revivals, numerous international productions, thousands of regional stagings and enduring popularity.

"No matter what culture or ethnic background, we all have family, extended families, villages, and extended villages filled with traditions, handed down from generation to generation by parents, grandparents, great-grand parents, on and on," explains Sammy Dallas Bayes, who directed and choreographed this production of Fiddler. "Constantly traditions are being challenged and altered or even dropped by the next generation. As Chava says to Tevye, ‘the world is changing papa.' So it goes with traditions — they are revised to exist in our ever-changing world, and this has been going on for centuries. I think the universal audience identifies with this aspect of family life."

Bayes danced in the chorus of the original Broadway production of Fiddler in 1964 and appeared in the 1971 motion picture. Over the 45 years since its debut, he has been the keeper of the original choreography and direction of Jerome Robbins. How has he sustained his enthusiasm and commitment to Fiddler?

"It is a classic, not only in longevity but probably the most important aspect is its structure," Bayes insists. "I have reflected many times on its overall composition and find it to be one of the most brilliantly constructed pieces of Broadway musical theater. If you think of the classical composers and their works, their classical compositions and then parallel the composition of Fiddler on the Roof, it definitely fits into the category of a classic, and classics tend to be something enjoyable and worth repeating, be it a classical symphony or Fiddler on the Roof."

Jerome Robbins spent months researching the show, envisioning choreography inspired by the culture's ethnic dance. He attended prayer services, consulted a Jewish dance scholar, and observed a Hassidic wedding where he saw a comedian do a gag with an empty wine bottle, dancing while it balanced atop his head.

Bayes remembers the day during the Washington, D.C. out-of-town tryout that Robbins put in a new dance for the men. He took the comic routine he'd seen and transformed it into the rousing wedding celebration that closes the first act. That Bottle Dance has become a cultural phenomenon of sorts. There are people who have never seen Fiddler yet they know the iconic image of the line dancers moving as one, bottles perfectly balanced, seemingly an impossible feat. According to Bayes, it's really a very simple concept that just looks astounding.

"To accomplish the demands of that particular dance," he explains. "you only need to be in fairly good shape and practice, practice, practice. I have had men in their 60's doing that dance. And no, the bottle does not drop for effect, it drops because the dancer takes his mental concentration off of what he's doing. They must work together as they hold hands while moving, and can cause mistakes if they are not in sync with each other."

When Bayes was Dance Captain on the original Broadway production, Robbins entrusted him with the preservation of his choreography. It took him nearly two years to study and archive every number from curtain up to curtain call. He served as Associate Choreographer for the film and since 1990 has been the Robbins foundation's official watchdog to preserve Jerome Robbins original direction and choreography for Fiddler on the Roof. His says that his greatest challenge today in recreating Robbins' choreography is "to get the dancers to execute the work as a character from the early 1900s and to maintain that character within any particular dance number."

Looking to the future, Bayes has plans to ensure that Robbins' original choreography will be preserved. As for the continued universality of the story, he believes that any family can identify with the ever-changing conditions within a family unit — how it affects the immediate family and how tensions arise regarding the idea of change and how to adopt it to work for rather than against the powerful bond existing in most families.

"Change can be very powerful and poignant to a family locked into past traditions — and hard to accept," Bayes admits. "Confronted by his second eldest daughter's choice to marry the man she loves, Tevye delivers a thought that brings this to light "Love, it's a new style...on the other hand our old ways were once new weren't they?"

And the tradition continues.

For more on Fiddler on the Roof, click here. To hear the Fiddler Intro Podcast, click here. To view the Bottle Dance from the 1971 motion picture adaptation of Fiddler, click here.

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