Entertainment

BEST SIDE STORY

PETER Pan flies, “West Side Story” gang members snap their fingers and a young, muscular Peter Martins rehearses.

Those are just a few of the video clips in “New York Story: Jerome Robbins & His World,” the New York Public Library’s ambitious assemblage of photos, posters, letters, costumes and more commemorating the legendary choreographer’s New York state of mind.

The man who taught Mary Martin’s Peter Pan to soar – and Zero Mostel’s Tevye to dance – would have turned 90 this year.

Here, amid his own photos and sketches (he was an avid amateur photographer), are costumes from his ballets, as well as his Emmy, Oscar and Tony awards; and a sweet, early snapshot of the young Robbins – nee Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz – leaping high above his shadow in the sand.

Harder to find are any signs of those other shadows: that of a conflicted gay man who named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee and rode his dancers so hard that when he tumbled into an orchestra pit, no one raced to help him out.

But it’s the work that lives after him, and this exhibit lets you see some of it, including clips from “The Ed Sullivan Show” and an updating of his “Opus Jazz” ballet. Danced by a young couple in cutoffs and jeans amid the weedy train tracks of the High Line, it shows Robbins at his lyrical best.

“New York Story” is on view through June 28, free, at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, at Lincoln Center;

nypl.org.