Your Guide to West Side Story: Broadway & Beyond
What to Expect: A Production Like No Other
Artistic Director Adam Sklute calls this unlike any production he has brought to Ballet West in his entire tenure. For the first time in the company's history, Ballet West dancers are not just dancing. They are singing, speaking, and performing with the full energy of Broadway musical theater while executing the precision and artistry of classical ballet.
The Big Picture: Two Legends, One Stage
This program is a celebration of two choreographers who each transformed both ballet and Broadway. Jerome Robbins choreographed and directed the original 1957 West Side Story and is a five-time Tony Award winner. Christopher Wheeldon, New York City Ballet's first-ever resident artist and himself a Tony Award winner, continues that legacy a generation later. Both men began as professional ballet dancers before becoming the defining choreographic voices of their eras, and tonight, their work shares the same stage.
The Guest Artists: Watch for These Two
Two celebrated guest artists join the Ballet West company for West Side Story Suite, and both carry remarkable stories.
Robbie Fairchild trained at the Ballet West Academy right here in Salt Lake City before going on to become a Principal Artist at New York City Ballet. He later earned a Tony Award nomination for his role in Wheeldon's An American in Paris on Broadway. He returns to his roots with Ballet West, performing the role of Tony.
Georgina Pazcoguin is a former New York City Ballet Soloist, Broadway performer, and co-founder of the advocacy group Final Bow for Yellowface. She is one of the last performers personally coached by Broadway legend Chita Rivera, the original Anita in the 1957 production.
The Programs
Antique Epigraphs (Jerome Robbins | Utah Premiere)
The program opens with one of Robbins' most mysterious and meditative works, a ballet for eight women set to the impressionist music of Claude Debussy, evoking the pastoral world of Greek antiquity. There is no story being told here in the traditional sense; instead, Robbins uses his hallmark movements to create something that feels both ancient and dreamlike.
WATCH FOR: The slow, swirling quality of the ensemble and the sense that every gesture carries a meaning just beyond words.
Carousel (A Dance) (Christopher Wheeldon | Utah Premiere) Created for New York City Ballet’s centennial celebration of composer Richard Rodgers, this romantic and joyful work draws from the beloved score of the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical — including the Carousel Waltz and If I Loved You. Wheeldon distills the central romance of the show into pure dance. Even if you’ve never seen Carousel, you’ll feel its warmth and longing.
WHAT TO WATCH: The expansive partnering and the way the music seems to lift the dancers off the floor.
After the Rain (Pas de Deux) (Christopher Wheeldon | Utah Premiere)
This is the still, quiet heart of the program. Originally created for two of New York City Ballet’s most celebrated dancers, this intimate duet is set to the meditative music of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, performed live by a cellist and pianist. It is a piece of extraordinary simplicity: no flash, no spectacle, just two people and music that seems to breathe.
WATCH FOR: The sculptural lifts and the way the dancers seem to move in slow motion, as if time itself has paused.
West Side Story Suite (Jerome Robbins | Utah Premiere)
This is the one that makes this program unlike anything Ballet West has done before. Robbins extracted this suite of dances from the original 1957 musical for the New York City Ballet in 1995, and it requires ballet dancers to do something almost entirely outside their training: become individual characters, inhabit a specific physical life, and in many cases, sing.
Stager Robert La Fosse, who worked directly with Robbins during his career, has spent five weeks with the Ballet West company preparing this work. He coached the dancers not just on steps, but on character — the difference in how Tony carries himself versus Riff, the swagger and street energy that makes the Jets and Sharks feel like real people. He asked every dancer to read the full script, including scenes that won't appear on stage, so they understand the emotional logic driving each number.
WATCH FOR: The gym scene, that moment when Tony and Maria first see each other across a crowded dance floor. "It's one of the greatest moments in theater," La Fosse says. Watch also for the color-coding in the costumes: the Sharks in deep reds and blacks, the Jets in yellows and light blues. Then, prepare yourself for the ending. As La Fosse says, "They're going to be blown away. And they're going to cry at the end."
Why This Story, Why Now
West Side Story is, at its core, a story about fear of the other — what happens when communities close themselves off, and the human cost of hatred. The immigrant experience at its center has shifted across the decades, and who "the other" is changes with each generation. But the underlying conflict has not. La Fosse carries that question into every rehearsal: Why are we telling this story now? Today, it's as much a question for the audience as it is for the dancers.