The issues with dance in the Broadway revival were not just that Karen Oliva couldn't perform the original Peter Gennaro/Jerome Robbins choreography in "The Dance at the Gym" and "America" but also that Arthur Laurents had Joey McNeely dismember the "Somewhere" ballet and use the truncated version Robbins had created for his "West Side Story Suite." Arthur also destroyed the iconic majesty of Robbins's final procession.
This was a deliberate effort on the part of Laurents to minimize the effect of dance in the production and maximize the effect of his book, by reducing, eliminating or destroying as much of Jerome Robbins's contribution as possible.
Arthur was able to do this because Robbins was dead, Bernstein was dead, Harry Kraut (Bernstein's manager) was dead and Floria Lasky (Robbins's lawyer) was dead. And Tom, Arthur's long-term love and conscience, was also gone. The people guarding the Bernstein and Robbins estates were unable to say no to the malevolent force that was Arthur Laurents, and poor Joey McNeely--who had reproduced the Robbins choreography beautifully on previous European tours--was forced to perform acts of artistic vandalism on the work of the mentor who had given him his career. McNeely will have to live with that shame.
Now Arthur is dead, and it is just a matter of time until someone does the violence to his work what he did to the work of his collaborators. It will begin with the switching of "Krupke" and "Cool," which Arthur always refused to allow, because it meant that he would have to rewrite some dialogue.
I can't wait.
Updated On: 5/31/12 at 03:49 PM
