Jerome Robbins' expanded his WEST SIDE STORY choreography into a New York urban ballet that became a world-wide hit and was performed on The Ed Sullivan Show (under Robbins' technical direction). The film, co-produced by "Great Performances," takes the performance off the stage and out of the TV studio to a handful of little-seen (on film), atmospheric urban New York locations. The performance is bookended by a "pure cinema" prologues and epilogues of the dancers' downtime as well as some interstitial bits between the four acts. The mere use of film over high-definition video suggests the extra effort of the filmmakers took to capture the performance, but they have also delivered a wonderful visual experience with a lot of available light, color gels, chiaroscuro lighting, and backlighting with stage-lights shining into the camera (at times, the film looks like FLASHDANCE or FAME crossed with a jazz soundtrack and ballet choreography). Shot on film and in anamorphic 2.40:1, some wide angles feature anamorphic bowing along the edges of the frame but that adds to the film's diverse look. Far from being a mere cinematic affectation, the use of the scope aspect ratio throughout the film results in some interesting compositions (although other times, it is used simply to encompass all the dancers within the same shot). Some of the choreography may provoke the same kind of titters from modern audiences that WEST SIDE STORY does, but Robbins' "modern dance" choreography was quite revolutionary for a ballet (especially one that toured around the world as a representation of American art and culture, and then was performed to the audience of "The Ed Sullivan Show" whose wide national viewership probably had quite clichéd ideas of what defined ballet).