Lenny & George Dance

West Side Story at 50

Could it be?Yes, it couldSomething's ComingSomething good...

Pauline Kael was the most respected film critic in America, but she had her off days. "I would guess that in a few decades," she wrote in 1963, "the dances in West Side Story will look as much like hilariously limited, dated period pieces as Busby Berkeley's 'Remember My Forgotten Man' number in Gold Diggers of 1933."
Guess again. West Side Story opened 50 years ago tonight - September 26th 1957 - at the Winter Garden on Broadway, and half-a-century on, when the Jets take off, in blue jeans and sneakers, thrusting up from the stage, arms stretching out to make their huge signature Ts in the air, audiences still thrill, in the theatre, at the ballet, and, pace Miss Kael, film and video audiences. West Side Story is the trick so many musicals since have never quite pulled off: great storytelling in American dance.
The year before West Side, My Fair Lady opened, cleaving to the rules of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical play and doing it so spectacularly that, afterwards, the form had nowhere else to go. West Side symbolised the possibilities of the future: New stories told in new ways. West Side doesn't have an opening number as such, just a wordless musical "Prologue" to accompany the Sharks and Jets as they dance out - or mime - their increasing hostility until, finally, the Shark leader cuts off the ear of a Jet. Never mind waiting for Pauline Kael to pronounce it dated, on its very opening night it risked sniggers: the gentlemen of the chorus nancying about pretending to be tough guys. But the audience bought it: Jerome Robbins, Broadway's master stager, proved you could tell a story about gang warfare through show dancing.