Audio By Carbonatix
Imagine having reached the highest level of skill in your field
through hours of grueling work that began when you were four years old.
Now imagine knowing that you’ll never get a permanent job, but will, if
you’re lucky, be hired periodically — that is, if your potential
boss likes your height, hair, legs, aura and style. At every job
interview, you’ll encounter hundreds, perhaps thousands, of equally
dedicated rivals with equally charming hair. This is the life of a
Broadway dancer.
Every Little Step is a documentary about the casting
of the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line — and A Chorus
Line itself, which premiered in 1975, is a musical about the
casting of a Broadway show. Much of the text f this classic is taken
from the words of actual Broadway gypsies who spoke with
choreographer-producer Michael Bennett about their lives. Bennett
commissioned Marvin Hamlisch to write the songs. The script was arrived
at through a process of brainstorming, and the rest is theater
history.
In the film, director Bob Avian claims that Bennett created “the
workshop device,” but this is nonsense. Long before 1975,
workshop-inspired productions had proliferated off-off-Broadway,
tossing out conventional ideas about structure, focusing on process
over product, and elevating the lives of ordinary people. Bennett’s
genius was to apply this approach to the big musical.
In the film, we meet Rachelle, who seems a shoo-in for the role of
haughty Sheila but loses out in the final round with a too-emotional
rendition of “At the Ballet.” And Deirdre, who’s been out of work so
long she’s contemplating leaving the stage but gets the part Rachelle
lost with a pitch-perfect display of arrogance. There’s Jason, whose
monologue on growing up gay has the judges in tears, and Stephanie, the
conventional blonde from New Jersey, who dances with such precision and
abandon that she wins a key role though she’s being considered only as
an understudy. Charlotte D’Amboise, a highly respected performer and
the daughter of Balanchine principal Jacques D’Amboise, dances her
heart out for a chance at Cassie. And Baayork Lee, now part of the
casting team, was the original Connie, a role built on her experiences
as a brilliant ballerina too cutely tiny for a professional career. She
protests fiercely as an actress she considers too cute is cast as
herself.
It’s left to Jacques D’Amboise, whose body eventually rebelled
against the rigors of ballet, to communicate the fervor that drives
these artists. Dance “becomes everything there is,” he says. “The
cosmos. The hardest thing is when you can’t dance.”
