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Rita Moreno & George Chakiris
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Rita Moreno & George Chakiris · Rita Moreno and George Chakiris are American actors who played the main roles within the Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks, in the 1961 film West Side Story. Moreno played Anita, Chakiris played her boyfriend Bernardo. They are therefore not pop artists in the ordinary sense, but singers and dancers in a film musical. Both received an Oscar for their supporting roles. Their work shows how a Broadway musical went to the silver screen in the 1960s, with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
In the song America the world of the Sharks takes centre stage. Anita and the other girls of the group set the praises of life in America against homesickness for Puerto Rico, while the boys contradict them. The piece is built on a Latin American rhythm, with lively dance and singing that goes back and forth like a conversation. Moreno has a career of more than seventy years and was the subject of a documentary in 2021. In this way the film with this song remained, for later generations too, an example of how pop, theatre and dance reinforce one another.
Listening
America · Rita Moreno & George Chakiris, 1961
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