With his fascinating rhythms, George Gershwin bridged the divide between the concert hall and popular entertainment – and no more so than in his orchestral work An American in Paris, later made into a famous film. 

Deborah Jones talks to leading classical dance-maker Christopher Wheeldon, as well as members of his creative team and dancers, about reuniting ballet and Broadway in his musical theatre version.

An American in Paris
An American in Paris in London’s West End. Photo © Tristram Kenton

In his thrilling book on 20th-century music, The Rest is Noise, music critic Alex Ross writes that George Gershwin “led at all times a double life: as music-theater professional and concert composer, as highbrow artist and lowbrow entertainer, as all-American kid and immigrants’ son, as white man and ‘white Negro’”.

Gershwin, who started out...