Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel Simeone
Notes ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 531-533
Author(s):  
Lars Helgert

Author(s):  
Ray Miller

Shakespeare’s plays have served as inspiration for a score of Broadway musicals. These musicals have contributed to the development of the musical theater libretto from a loose collection of sketches to an integrated “book musical” that equally values text, music, design, directing, and dance. While many are familiar with some of the most popular hits from those shows—including “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” from the Cole Porter’s musical, Kiss Me, Kate, or the balcony scene song, “Maria,” from the Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim collaboration, West Side Story, the contribution of choreographers and dancers to the translation of Shakespeare-inspired music, text, and scenography to the musical theater stage has not received due scholarly attention. This chapter considers the partnership between text and dance in selected Broadway musicals that have been based on the works of Shakespeare, focusing on choreography for musicals by George Balanchine, Hanya Holm, and Jerome Robbins.


1981 ◽  
Vol 36 (7-8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Weber
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Ben Winters

This chapter examines historical presentational practices of sound film and, specifically, the extra music added to roadshow versions of films between the 1930s and 1960s—including Gone with the Wind, West Side Story, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It argues that such added music—which included overtures, intermission, entr’acte, and exit music—when combined with controlled theatrical lighting and use of the curtain, might have prompted a number of different cinematic listening experiences among audiences. It suggests that an understanding of these historical presentational practices might call into question comfortable assumptions about the nature of sound-film ontology and the relationship between cinema as “Text” and cinema as “Event”—issues that resonate with the discourse surrounding historically informed performance (HIP) practice in musicology.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document