Marc Crousillat, a Shark, tells you everything you need to know about how her phrases can be transcendent — he is a vision of clarity and looseness. But there are awkward moments with many of the dancers who are not equal to sustaining qualities of drive and undulating motion. What is it all building up to?

Robbins, both a micro and macro choreographer, was able to show the body’s expressiveness without self-conscious touches, while taking care that every bit of the stage served a purpose — even the negative space. And there is the naturalness of his movement, which never required that a dancer add anything extra. His way to get dancers to tone it down? He would say, “Easy.”

It’s not a dirty word. Mr. Crousillat gets easy. Yet the production seems to be aiming for that cheesiest of words: gritty. It doesn’t seem to grasp that it’s important not only how a dancer leaps but how he stands. Here, the most macho gang members are almost comical: Arms hang down and curl in at either side, and feet are planted feet wide — like cowboys fresh from the gym — so as not to reveal classical turnout. It’s posturing.

Robbins’s deep movement investigations revealed — and still do — how emotions, even the most imperceptible ones, live within the body. That’s not always an easy quality to draw out. Shereen Pimentel, as Maria, is a powerful singer but not a natural mover; you ache for her when she has to dash happily around the stage. And Isaac Powell, as Tony, has many charms as an actor, but when he moves — even just stretching his arms from side to side — he suddenly looks like he’s the lead in a rom-com.

There are other questionable moments, as when the Sharks and the Jets position themselves on either side of Maria and Tony to pull them apart, after the couple meets at the gym. It’s an image embarrassingly more suited to an Instagram post, which is sad but fitting: This is an Instagram show.