The 2020 revival of the classic Broadway musical West Side Story – vividly reimagined by director Ivo van Hove and choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker — opened less than a month before the coronavirus outbreak shut down Broadway. The producers have announced it will not reopen. From the New York Times:
Earlier this summer “West Side Story,” the ambitious, avant-garde-tinged revival of the classic musical, got some significant relief: $10 million in federal funding. It was the maximum amount allowed under the new Shuttered Venue Operators Grant initiative, which devoted $16 billion in federal aid to help music clubs, theaters and other live-event businesses recover from the pandemic.
But even with that aid in its war chest, the show announced this week that it would not return to Broadway. Asked about the grant on Tuesday, the show said it would give back the money.
“‘West Side Story’ will be returning the entirety of the S.V.O.G. grant with the hope that another production will be able to use the funds,” a spokesman for the show, Rick Miramontez, said in a statement.
https://twitter.com/nytimesarts/status/1425213000483475457 As longtime readers of The Randy Report know, I’m lucky to have performed the original staging of West Side Story several times as well as stepped up as choreographer for a new production in San Diego a few years ago. The show is both glorious and a beast. We still anxiously await the upcoming Steven Spielberg film of the iconic musical. https://youtu.be/Taelr72RHZ8
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