Note 11: A Chorus Line

     Even though TV has bombarded the show business with backstage dramas about the anguish of auditions, A Chorus Line as a musical which centered on seventeen Broadway dancers auditioning for spots on a chorus line keeps standing straight and strongly. The musical is set on the bare stage of a Broadway theater during an audition for a musical. A Chorus Line provides a glimpse into the personalities of the performers and the choreographer as they describe the events that have shaped their lives and their decisions to become dancers.

Following several workshops and an Off-Broadway production, A Chorus Line opened on Broadway on July 25, 1975, directed and choreographed by Buffalo native Michael Bennett. An unprecedented box office and critical hit, the musical received 12 Tony Award nominations and won 9 of them, in addition to the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Moreover, the original Broadway production ran for 6,137 performances, becoming the longest-running production in Broadway history until surpassed by Cats in 1997, and the longest-running Broadway musical originally produced in the US, until surpassed in 2011 by Chicago.

As the director whittles a group of auditioning hopefuls down to a final eight, we hear the dancers' confessions: we learn about their broken homes, aspirations to stardom, fear of failure and, in the touching case of a Puerto Rican guy, his shame at being found by his parents dancing in a drag revue. But in the famous final number, One, we rejoice at seeing the dancers perform in glorious unison. Being a chorus singer for almost entire of my lifetime, the musical reminds me that no matter however much we may resent it, we still choke with emotion at the sight of a group of raw RAF servicemen being transformed into a perfectly drilled ensemble. This show also triggered me to ask questions to myself, ’why do I sing? Why do I dance? Why do I enjoy on stage?’ I think the answers are not as difficult as I once concerned, it is the genuine passion I feel from the music that makes me keep singing, just like the thrill you can find in A Chorus Line.