Antique Epigraphs is a ballet Miami City Ballet Ballet by ballet master Jerome Robbins. GREAT PERFORMANCES: DANCE IN AMERICA: CHOREOGRAPHY BY JEROME ROBBINS: ANTIQUE EPIGRAPHS /

One in this dance series presented under the umbrella of "Great Performances." In this program, two pieces by choreographer Jerome Robbins are performed by the Miami City Ballet, the opening ballet, "Antique Epigraphs," evokes images of ancient Greece and was inspired by statues that Robbins saw at a museum in Naples. The second dance, "Fancy Free," was choreographed by Robbins in 1944 and has since become an American classic. The witty dance about three sailors on shore leave in New York City marks Robbins' first collaboration with composer Leonard Bernstein. In an interview with Rosamond Bernier, Robbins comments briefly about the beginning of his career and his work with Bernstein.
An all-female cast performs this dramatic and introspective piece, alluding to the earthy fervor and sculptural forms of Greek antiquity.
The first six sections of Antique Epigraphs are set to an orchestrated version of Six Epigraphes Antiques, music originally written as accompaniment for the prose poetry of Pierre Louÿs' Chanson de Bilitis, supposed translations of newly discovered autobiographical poetry of Sappho. The seventh section of the ballet is danced to Syrinx, a melody for unaccompanied flute.