Editing High Button Shoes (section)

==Dance elements==
The highlight of the original production was a long (7- to 10-minute) ensemble dance number ("The Bathing Beauty Ballet", to the song "On a Sunday by the Sea") at the beginning of the second act. Choreographer Robbins staged this number in the manner of a [[Mack Sennett]] silent slapstick film. It uses the music of "On A Sunday By the Sea", Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody, and Offenbach's ''can-can'' from ''[[Orpheus in the Underworld]]''.  "This number was so basic to the show that deleting it would render the evening incoherent. It was a major evocation of a period, a tribute to silent-film comedy."<ref>Mordden, p. 210</ref>  [[Amanda Vaill]], in her biography of Robbins, describes this dance number: "The actors careen across the stage, in and out of a row of boardwalk bathhouses, slamming doors, falling, rolling, leaping to their feet, colliding with one another, in a masterpiece of intricately plotted chaos that bears all the marks of the developing Robbins style: wit, character, drama, and precision."<ref>{{cite book| last=Vaill| first=Amanda| date=6 May 2008| title=Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins| publisher=Random House, Inc.| isbn=978-0-7679-0421-6| page=[https://archive.org/details/somewherelifeofj00vail/page/143 143]| url=https://archive.org/details/somewherelifeofj00vail/page/143| url-access=subscription}}</ref>