West Side Story is a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and conception and choreography by Jerome Robbins. It was inspired by William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. The story is set in the Upper West Side neighborhood in New York City in the mid 1950s, an ethnic, blue-collar neighborhood (in the early 1960s, much of the neighborhood was cleared in an urban renewal project for the Lincoln Center, which changed the neighborhood's character). The musical explores the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds.

In addition to Bernstein's own West Side Story Suite, the music from the musical has been adapted by The Buddy Rich Big Band, which arranged and recorded "West Side Story Medley" on the 1966 album Buddy Rich's Swingin' New Big Band. The Stan Kenton Orchestra recorded Johnny Richards' 1961 Kenton's West Side Story, an album of jazz orchestrations based on the Bernstein scores. It won the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Recording by a Large Group. The 1996 album The Songs of West Side Story included covers by such diverse artists as Selena ("A Boy Like That"), Little Richard ("I Feel Pretty"), Trisha Yearwood ("I Have a Love") and Salt-n-Pepa, Def Jef, Lisa Lopes, the Jerky Boys, and Paul Rodriguez all collaborating on "Gee, Officer Krupke", as well as Chick Corea Elektric Band collaborating with Steve Vai's Monsters on "Rumble".  The television show Curb Your Enthusiasm extensively referenced West Side Story in the season seven episode "Officer Krupke". An episode of Welcome Back, Kotter, "Sweatside Story", parodies West Side Story when the Sweathogs engage in a rumble with students from rival New Utrecht High School. In the third season of the series Glee, three episodes feature characters auditioning, rehearsing and performing a school production of West Side Story. Songs from the musical are performed in episode 2 "I Am Unicorn", episode 3 "Asian F" and episode 5 "The First Time" and also given digital releases. The Animaniacs episode "West Side Pigeons" features a parody romance and rivalry that mirrors that of the Jets and the Sharks. In the Tom and Jerry Tales episode "The League of Cats", Tom's and Jerry's respective leagues act very similar to the Jets and the Sharks. They also perform a number similar to the "Jet Song".  In film, Pixar animator Aaron Hartline used the first meeting between Tony and Maria as inspiration for the moment when Ken meets Barbie in Toy Story 3. In the 2013 movie Teen Beach Movie, two teens are trapped inside a movie called Wet Side Story, in which a group of surfers and a group of bikers are competing in a turf war. Bring It On: In It to Win It has a plot that parallels West Side Story, and makes the reference explicit to the point where the two rival cheerleading squads are named the Jets and the Sharks. The 2005 short musical comedy film West Bank Story, which won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film, concerns a love story between a Jew and a Palestinian and parodies several aspects of West Side Story.  In 1963, Mad Magazine published "East Side Story" set at the United Nations building on the East Side of Manhattan, a parody of the Cold War, with the two rival gangs led by John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, by writer Frank Jacobs and illustrator Mort Drucker. From 1973 to 2004, Wild Side Story, a camp parody musical, based loosely on West Side Story and adapting parts of the musical's music and lyrics, was performed a total of more than 500 times in Miami Beach, Florida, Stockholm, Gran Canaria and Los Angeles. The show lampoons the musical's tragic love story, and also lip-synching and drag shows.

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