I was first introduced to the music of West Side Story while attending day camp back in the summer of 1962, when I was entering the sixth grade. Another girl in the group that I was with had just received a copy of the LP soundtrack of the original Broadway musical stage production of West Side Story for her birthday and brought it in to play for us. West Side Story mania was in the air that summer, as the kids at camp went around singing all the songs in camp, on the buses to and from camp, and even walked around snapping their fingers in the hallways. I fell in love with the music to WSS immediately.
Although West Side Story's popularity was at its height and it was still new and fresh through most of the 1960's, I did not get to see the movie West Side Story until around Christmastime of 1968, as a high school senior, at a now-defunct movie theatre roughly an hour north of the city that I reside in. I fell in love with it immediately. Since I was still a high school teenager when I first saw it, I was able to identify with the kids in the film being kids, but when I got older, although I still love this great classic, I looked at it differently. I now appreciate WSS even more for its artistic beauty, the music, the very story behind it, and how much proof West Side Story is of how various emotions can be beautifully epressed in the form of dance.
Afew years later, I was in an evening jewelry-making course, when somebody who'd brought in a small black and white TV because West Side Story was on that night to watch it, managed to encourage the other class members to watch it also, which we all did. That summer, when I went on a six-week trip, someone in the group I was with had brought along a cassette tape of the soundtrack to the film version of West Side Story, which was played almost every evening, during free hours. My love for West Side Story, which I'd put on the back burner for afew years, had been re-ignited.
I longed for WSS to come back, and it came back on TV a couple of months later, just before Thanksgiving. Need I add that I've been in love with this great, golden oldie-but-goody keeper of a movie classic since?
(LOL)
Although West Side Story's popularity was at its height and it was still new and fresh through most of the 1960's, I did not get to see the movie West Side Story until around Christmastime of 1968, as a high school senior, at a now-defunct movie theatre roughly an hour north of the city that I reside in. I fell in love with it immediately. Since I was still a high school teenager when I first saw it, I was able to identify with the kids in the film being kids, but when I got older, although I still love this great classic, I looked at it differently. I now appreciate WSS even more for its artistic beauty, the music, the very story behind it, and how much proof West Side Story is of how various emotions can be beautifully epressed in the form of dance.
Afew years later, I was in an evening jewelry-making course, when somebody who'd brought in a small black and white TV because West Side Story was on that night to watch it, managed to encourage the other class members to watch it also, which we all did. That summer, when I went on a six-week trip, someone in the group I was with had brought along a cassette tape of the soundtrack to the film version of West Side Story, which was played almost every evening, during free hours. My love for West Side Story, which I'd put on the back burner for afew years, had been re-ignited.
I longed for WSS to come back, and it came back on TV a couple of months later, just before Thanksgiving. Need I add that I've been in love with this great, golden oldie-but-goody keeper of a movie classic since?
(LOL)
