Fight Clip Club: West Side Story

You’re snapping your fingers already, aren’t you? I know you are.

REPOST-IT NOTE: I am on vacation this week and so I thought I’d remind us all about this Fight Clip Club analysis about West Side Story’s iconic opening sequence, in light of my current obsession with looking at Romeo & Juliet fights the past couple weeks. I’ve also taken off the paywall for this, as it’s a repost (riposte?) and not a fresh essay. Enjoy!

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Today, I’m interrupting my foray into women’s fights in order to cover a genre of fight I haven’t gotten to yet: Abstract/Stylized. It’s hard to wrap one’s brain around what this means if you’re not an expert in this art form, and it’s not a style you see super often in movies especially, so I thought I’d bring this famous fight/dance scene to FCC and explain.

The central aspect of a Stylized fight is the abstraction of movements. In other words, the moves in a Stylized fight scene for the most part aren’t real-looking violence or combat techniques, but dance movements that are meant not to imitate a fight, but to represent it. Let’s look at a few of the main dance moves that are representative in this way in this famous scene. Watch the scene and then let’s talk about a few of the most distinctive pieces of its choreography.

 Here’s some of the most famous moves from this whole opening sequence:

• Snapping fingers

Okay, so this is probably the most famous motion in this scene—it’s what everyone thinks of when they think of this opening sequence. But look at it in terms of dance choreography and storytelling: when do the characters snap? Why are they doing it, does it seem like? In that world where dance is a normal expression, what is the snapping doing? What does it mean? 

• Basketball moves 

There’s a mix of exaggerated dance moves and actual basketball sport movements in the scene where the gang members use the basketball court. Can you see the difference? What does this mix of style do as far as the aesthetics of the movement in the whole scene?

• Extended limbs & popcorning pirouettes

As the (especially Jets) gangs move through the city blocks, you’ll see some wide-armed reaching movements and wide high dance kicks percolated throughout. Jumps and pirouettes are scattered throughout as well. 

What do all these abstract/stylized/exaggerated moves represent? What would these dance moves be if it weren’t a dance?

It does get a bit closer to a realistic fight scene at 5:45, but you can see how the fight moves are still very dancelike, in a much different way than our most dancey fight so far, from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And they’re mixed in, again, with very not-fighty bits, like the shared log rolls and more pirouettes. You can see in Crouching Tiger that it’s still a fight scene. This one, though, is a dance scene made to represent a fight scene. See the difference?

Notice also the twirl at 6:12, and the groups leapfrogging each other at 6:50. These aren’t combat techniques, but dance moves that are meant not to replicate, but represent a fight.

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Scene: Jets vs. Sharks, West Side Story (1961)

Actors: This sequence includes all of the chorus of the gangs, including the more main characters who lead each gang: Bernardo (George Chakiris) and Riff (Russ Tamblyn).

Stuntpeople: None, this is a dance performed by the actors/dancers.

Choreographer: In this case, our choreographer isn’t a fight creator but a dance choreographer. One of the best in theatre history in fact: Jerome Robbins. Look him up—he’s a legend.

Setting: 1950s New York City

Style & Weapons: This is a dance representing an unarmed group fight—it’s a 1950s city gang rumble. There are a couple moments where ‘found weapons’ are used (like construction rubble or the basketball), but mainly it’s an unarmed fight.

Scenario: This is the Prologue of the musical (pre-scene-1), and as such, this dance is meant to introduce us to the setting, the main two warring factions of the story, some of the pivotal characters, and what their dynamic is. Since West Side Story is a modern retelling of Romeo & Juliet, this dance parallels the opening scene in Shakespeare: “Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” and all that. It’s the same scene, essentially. This is a musical, though, so instead of a scene of spoken banter, we get a beautifully choreographed dance sequence with hardly any dialogue, which does the same establishing of scene, character, and conflict. It’s one of the more extraordinary dance sequences in all of musical theatre.

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Genre:  3 (stylized), c (swashbuckling)

3 Rules: This is a group fight, even if we’re only talking about the sequence that happens at 5:45. So the 3 Rules will apply to the gangs as a group—the individuals within the gangs share the same goals, in other words. 

Objective: to dominate the other faction / to establish territory

Tactics: There’s a lot of posturing and being present to take over various city blocks as well as the basketball court. Vocal and physical mockery of the other side, including graffiti. 

Obstacles: there are several environmental obstacles for both sides, as well as the fact that if they’re caught fighting, they’ll get in trouble with the police. It also seems like both factions are trying to avoid harming unallied/innocent bystanders.

Other Questions: Contemporary viewers kind of make fun of this scene, mainly it seems because it’s supposedly tough guy gang members doing beautiful dances instead of hard fighting, and so that juxtaposition feels funny. But, hey: it’s a musical. Look at it closely with this perspective and it’s pretty beautiful, even powerful, stuff.

Fun Fact: Obviously this opening sequence is one of the most well known dances in all theatre (certainly in all musical cinema). As such, anyone doing this musical anytime after this production has had to take this Jerome Robbins-made dance fight into account when they choreograph it for their own production. Often you’ll see, as in the wildly popular 2021 remake, that this dance-fight will be redone to look more realistically like a fight than an abstracted dance.

I chose this scene because: It’s a legendary piece of choreography, and it epitomizes what I mean when I talk about a stylized genre of fight scene. If you weren’t sure what I meant by that, this dance illustrates the concept beautifully—dancey movements constructed to represent combat movements. Plus, it’s just a brilliant piece of physical storytelling. We don’t need dialogue to be able to understand exactly what’s going on.

One of the most extraordinary and brilliant dance scenes of all time.