Abstract
While ethnic rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks in the film West Side Story has long figured as a point of scholarly concern, we argue the musical's main conflict is not between the two gangs, but rather that of youth versus adult authority. Engaging in a close analysis of the dances choreographed by Jerome Robbins, we contend that the gangs' enmity against each other is subsumed by their collective struggle to reject the socially prescribed roles of adults and children in Cold War America, which fetishized childhood innocence. Robbins's complex representations of youthful play participated in defining a “youth counterculture.”
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