There’s a Place for Us : A 1950s New York musical based on Shakespeare resonates with those coming of age in the millennium.

One of my Christmas gifts included a videotape of “West Side Story,” my first favorite film. It is an added bonus that I received this gift from my stepson, Yannis. I’ve had my current audio tape of the movie soundtrack--a modern version of the 1961 movie score with four previously unreleased songs--for two years. Alone in the Peugeot, I crank the volume way up. I posture with Riff and the rest of the Jets, shoulder mambo to the “Dance at the Gym,” sing along with “America.” Yannis has been a regular captive to this fixation of mine, along with my niece Karla and nephew Timothy. The three of them have come to enjoy the music, abandoning petty needling to follow the story in the music.

They are just about where I was when I was first caught in the thrall of this movie. There was no more perfect repository for the imaginings of a lonely and deeply romantic preteen whose body refused all commands to remain manageable. I was the gifted kid who got shipped out of the neighborhood to the laboratory school, with neither a survival kit nor sufficient moxie to bear up under the scrutiny of a school administration not in the habit of acknowledging that little colored girls from the ghetto could be smart. The streets at home became hostile because I was only a part-time player. The halls at school were worse because I was so self-consciously poor. “West Side Story” gave me someplace to hide. The fights were ballet, the music was urgent and vivid and all of my passions were given voice.

Karla, Timothy and Yannis, too, could use a place to take a break from the business of growing up. Karla and Timothy are intelligent children of a loving and driving single mother. Tim is 13, working at managing his emotions, not always successful with the anger thing. Karla, at 10, is discovering the complications of her own person, using all her energies to transition from little girl to whatever is next. Yannis is 13, nearly 6 feet tall, wears glasses and is slat-thin. He needs something to get him through being the tallest person he knows, his parents included.

These are not kids for whom gangsta rap resonates. College is a given in their futures, academic and professional success expected. But now can be confounding. Hormones and emotions swoop and dive, hungry for prey. “West Side Story” happens to be around, complete with tour guide, to absorb the fallout. My current partners in fantasy want to know all that I want to share: Are any of the actors in this movie still alive? How many times have I seen it? Is this videotape faithful to the original? Were those close-fitting jeans and tight shirts cool for that time?

Karla is gratified to see them wearing Converse All-Stars. How did Marni Nixon’s voice get so perfectly correlated to Natalie Wood’s moving mouth? If Yannis had directed this movie, he would have hired people who could sing the music and not gone through the expense of dubbing. And why, they want to know, is Rita Moreno the only Latino performer in a major role? Some parts are a hard sell for these pragmatists: They point out that Tony is going to get fired for stopping to sing “Something’s Coming” when he is supposed to be cleaning up Doc’s store. And can’t Maria’s parents hear them singing “Tonight” to each other on the balcony? I try to explain, sometimes resorting to “It’s a movie! Not real life!”

This does nothing to diminish the current experience of sharing “West Side Story.” We have compared times we’ve seen the movie, and I am still way ahead of their combined viewings. We have considered dancing down the streets, crouched in a jazz stance. How insane the uninitiated would think us. We anticipated the tragedy of the gleaming switchblades produced by Bernardo and Riff during the rumble and were shocked by the gun that changed everything. The ending, we agree, was sad. The experience was emotionally satisfying, all around.

This, from a group that splits into two or three camps at a multiplex theater. Somehow, this 34-year-old movie and its music draws us in. In the company of Yannis, Tim and Karla, I can confess to the urgent desire I once had for a pastel-colored flounced skirt, with matching underpants and shoes and a rooftop to dance on.