Can one recapture the excitement that A Chorus Line brought to Broadway? The Broadway musical seemed moribund in the middle of the 1970s. The big hits of the previous decade, such as Hello, Dolly!, Fiddler on the Roof and Man of La Mancha, had closed and the era of the great musical plays that followed the Rodgers and Hammerstein model was over. Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince combined for major artistic successes between 1970 and 1973 with Company, A Little Night Music and Follies, but their appeal was limited, as can be seen by the length of their runs and mixed commercial success. The rock musical had become a Broadway reality with Hair, Two Gentlemen of Verona and other shows, but rock was a new musical language that many in the traditional Broadway audience had not yet accepted. Creators of the musical theatre searched for a new mould that might combine new musical styles and contemporary thinking with tradition, building upon the genre’s proud history. A Chorus Line did all of this as a veritable celebration of Broadway dance and dancers, bringing new life to the genre and taking it into the colossal hit era of 6,000-performance runs.

Those who saw A Chorus Line during its original run will not easily forget it. The plot was minimal and somewhat artificial, but the characters were engrossing. We recognised types of people that we knew and with each part of their stories our fascination grew. The singing and dancing had a special immediacy because, within the world that the director Michael Bennett magically created, we knew that these characters would express themselves through music and movement.

The creators of A Chorus Line built upon decades of Broadway history when dance was integrated into the musical as a crucial part of character development and dramatic impact. It had taken years in musical comedy to integrate plot and significant aspects of the music, but by the time of Show Boat (1927) and Of Thee I Sing (1931), song placement had become more careful in some shows and plots sometimes advanced during songs. Although this trend could hardly be described as linear, by the time Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote Carousel (1945), songs were often an important part of the plot, and extended musical sequences were more common.

The integration of dance with a show’s plot was a slower process. Victor Herbert, a Broadway pioneer in several areas, wrote some of the first dance musicals, such as The Lady of the Slipper (1912).¹ In such shows, Herbert used dance for spectacular effect and throughout entire scenes, surpassing its more common use for variety. The famous team of Vernon and Irene Castle was hired to show the latest ballroom steps, but they were dismissed in Philadelphia because part of their work seemed too suggestive. During the 1920s dances would follow a song, and various stage personalities offered dance specialties that had nothing to do with the plot. For example, according to Hugh Fordin, the Sunny star Marilyn Miller interrupted Oscar Hammerstein II as he described the plot, wondering when she would do her specialty tap number.² There were a number of fine dancers on Broadway in the 1920s, including Fred and Adele Astaire, Ann Pennington and Marilyn Miller, who helped introduce dance as a way of describing their characters, but for the most part dance remained part of the musical’s quest for variety. Most shows included dances added solely for entertainment; A Connecticut Yankee and Show Boat were two exceptions. Dances designed by such leading choreographers as a Busby Berkeley were fairly predictable and resulted only in the credit line ‘dances by’.³

As Hollywood musicals appeared and confirmed the public’s interest in watching stars dance (perhaps a metaphor for what could not be shown), Broadway followed suit. Ethan Mordden describes the continued development of the character dance in ‘Clifton Webb’s unassuming soft shoe or Tamara Geva’s ballet glide’ and the continued popularity of the kick line.⁴ (The latter, of course, never died; A Chorus Line exploited the appeal of the long, shapely female leg and a line’s drilled precision.) By the second half of the 1930s, however, more ambitious dances appeared in shows, first and most famously in On Your Toes (1936), with a score by Rodgers and Hart and direction by George Abbott. George Balanchine, the famed Russian choreographer, worked on the show and was the first honoured with the credit line ‘choreography by’. His major contribution was the ballet ‘Slaughter on Tenth Avenue’, danced by Ray Bolger, Tamara Geva and George Church. Abbott remembered the segment as ‘one of the best numbers I’ve ever seen in the theatre, both musically and choreographically’.⁵ The show also included an intentionally over-the-top ballet in the first act, ‘Princess Zenobia’. The dances were part of a story about a vaudeville hoofer trying to make it in ballet. The dances were praised at the time, but, as Marian Monta Smith has noted, they were seen as an exception and the production had little immediate influence.⁶ Balanchine continued to work on Broadway into the 1950s, but there are few other shows for which his choreography had a lasting influence.⁷

It seems significant that George Abbott directed On Your Toes, because he went on to be a major influence on the continuing integration of the musical and on two important choreographers who later became directors. As extensive use of dance became part of the musical, the director emerged as the figure who assembled the show’s elements into a creative whole. By the 1960s, several of the most important directors were choreographers. Two of these, Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse, worked with Abbott and learned to direct the book from him. The line continues with Hal Prince, who, although not a choreographer, also explored the musical’s greater integration. He began his Broadway career working for Abbott in the early 1950s and learned direction from both Abbott and Robbins.

The greater integration of dance, specifically ballet, into the musical required the willing cooperation of Broadway creators and understanding talent from the ballet world, a combination that came together in Oklahoma! Rodgers, Hammerstein and the producers Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner of the Theatre Guild sought to make ballet part of the show’s plot apparatus and hired Agnes de Mille as choreographer. She had handled Western themes with her 1942 ballet Rodeo, with music by Aaron Copland. De Mille’s work in Oklahoma! is legendary, from her insistence on real dancers and separate rehearsals to her battles with the director, Rouben Mamoulian.⁸ Such dances as ‘Laurey Makes Up Her Mind’ at the end of the first act changed Broadway history. De Mille’s dancers served as substitutes for most of the principal actors during the ballet and helped make convincing the notion of Laurie dreaming her way to a choice between Curley and Jud. De Mille’s use of counterpoint in her ballets, with characters doing different movements at the same time, added to the visual appeal.⁹

Broadway creators are nothing if not imitative, and several immediately capitalised on the new idea of taking the highbrow art of ballet into the middlebrow world of the Broadway musical. De Mille played a major role throughout the 1940s. She next worked on One Touch of Venus (1943), with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ogden Nash, who coauthored the book with S. J. Perelman. A show about Venus coming to life invited fanciful ballets. De Mille contributed ‘Forty Minutes for Lunch’ in the first act, where Venus meets New York workers in Rockefeller Center, and ‘Venus in Ozone Heights’ as the second act’s dream ballet, where the goddess discovers suburbia. De Mille went on to Bloomer Girl (1944), with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E. Y. Harburg, where she contributed a ballet based on an ‘Uncle Tom’ show and a Civil War ballet in which female dancers expressed the feelings of those watching husbands and sons go off to war.

De Mille returned to work with Rodgers and Hammerstein as choreographer for Carousel, where her dances again played a major role in plot development. The opening ballet-pantomime introduces the setting and mood, and in the second-act dance, Billy Bigelow’s daughter expresses her frustration. De Mille next choreographed Brigadoon, Lerner and Loewe’s breakthrough hit, including atmospheric Scottish dances and the chase ballet in the second act. De Mille became the first choreographer-director in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Allegro (1947), where she tried to unify a rambling plot, a singing Greek chorus and many musical numbers calling for motion. She included a fantasy ballet where, in a manner reminiscent of Our Town, characters both living and dead appear. The show would have challenged any director, but it did give de Mille a chance to develop comfort with all types of stage motion.

Agnes de Mille’s peers, who helped dance become a more important part of the Broadway musical, included, among others, Jack Cole, Michael Kidd and Jerome Robbins. Cole helped establish the Broadway vernacular dance tradition with his imaginative use of steps from ethnic and ballroom dances and acrobatics, often set to big band music.¹⁰ He also added ballets to shows, such as his slow-motion softball game in Allah Be Praised (1944). Michael Kidd choreographed Finian’s Rainbow (1947), Guys and Dolls (1950) and Can-Can (1953), showing an admirable range; his major success as a choreographer-director was Li’l Abner (1956). Jerome Robbins, one of Broadway’s most important choreographers, was the first dancer to become a truly successful director.

Jerome Robbins straddled ballet and Broadway for much of his career, but worked little on Broadway from the mid-1960s to the 1980s. His first major ballet was the popular Fancy Free in 1944, created with the composer Leonard Bernstein. They brought the ballet’s energy, references to vernacular music and dance and a plot concerning three sailors on leave in wartime New York City to Broadway in On the Town, which also involved the lyricists and book writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green and director George Abbott. Much about the show was memorable (see Chapter 11), especially its frenetic energy and constant motion. In her autobiography Distant Dances, Sono Osato, a ballet dancer who played Ivy Turnstiles, describes her work with Abbott and Robbins.¹¹ Abbott directed the book scenes, but Robbins had a free hand with the dances. The two major ballets were ‘Miss Turnstiles’ and ‘Gabey in the Playground of the Rich’, the latter a dream ballet near the end of the show. Both helped propel the story. Osato danced the latter ballet with a dancer substituting for the actor who played Gabey. Abbott allowed Robbins to show how dance could be incorporated in varied situations, helping lead finally to shows such as West Side Story.

Robbins continued to work on Broadway as well as in ballet and modern dance. In 1945 he contributed the ballet ‘Interplay’, with music by Morton Gould, to the vaudeville Concert Varieties.¹² In December of that year, Billion Dollar Baby opened, starring the dancer Joan McCracken with choreography by Robbins. Far more famous is Robbins’s work with George Abbott during the 1947–48 season, including High Button Shoes (1947) and Look, Ma, I’m Dancin (1948). Abbott directed and wrote High Button Shoes, a fast-paced farce built around Phil Silvers. The score was Jule Styne’s first for Broadway. He considered himself a songwriter, but Robbins convinced him to score the ‘Mack Sennett Ballet’, where Keystone Kops and a bear chased the leads. All finally land in a pile topped by a flag-waving policeman. The number was repeated in the retrospective Jerome Robbins’ Broadway (1989). Look, Ma I’m Dancin was a vehicle for Nancy Walker conceived by Robbins. Walker played a brewery heiress who becomes a patron for a ballet company and finally dances with it, a hilarious possibility given her clowning skills. Robbins’s ‘Sleepwalker’s Ballet’ was one of the highlights in a show that ran for only six months because of Walker’s ill health. Robbins also worked with Abbott on Call Me Madam, a vehicle for Ethel Merman with a score by Irving Berlin, but the show is remembered more for its star and score than for its dancing. Abbott reports that Robbins started rehearsals early to create his dances, but the major number was removed before opening night. Abbott reveals his faith in spoken materials, predictable for one of the genre’s best book directors: ‘Time and time again the ambitious dance effort will fail, whereas something conceived for practical purposes and on the spur of the moment will be a success. This is equally true of songs.’¹³ Abbott’s type of show, the fast-paced comedy, however, was in decline, as dance became a more integral part of the musical.

In 1951 The King and I opened, a much-loved show by Rodgers and Hammerstein that included Robbins’s lengthy ballet ‘The Small House of Uncle Thomas’, which offers interesting commentary on the plot’s theme of East meeting West. The dance also appeared in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway.

In 1954 Abbott gave Robbins billing as co-director for The Pajama Game (considered later), partly because of his success at working with such dancers as the star Carol Haney. The show’s choreographer was Bob Fosse, and other important newcomers to Abbott’s team were the producers Hal Prince and Robert E. Griffith, who later produced West Side Story.

Robbins earned his first full credit as a Broadway director in Bells Are Ringing, a show with little important dancing, music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Comden and Green and a delightful star in Judy Holliday. It ran for two years. At this point Robbins was ready to spread his wings by taking on both direction and choreography. He realised this ambition the following year with West Side Story.

West Side Story (1957) marks the full integration of dance into the Broadway musical and the true arrival of the choreographer-director. Plans for a modern version of Romeo and Juliet involving Robbins, Bernstein and Arthur Laurents had started as early as 1949.¹⁴ Their original thought was that the lovers should be Catholic and Jewish and the story should occur around the time of Easter and Passover, but they were unable to work together with any consistency and the project was shelved. Bernstein and Laurents ran into each other in Beverly Hills in August 1955 and decided to move the story to New York’s West Side and pit gangs of Puerto Ricans against the white ‘Americans’.¹⁵

As director and choreographer, Robbins was responsible ultimately for the full integration of each element into a dramatic whole. He believed in method acting, dividing the cast into the two gangs and forbidding them to socialise on the set. His intensity in rehearsal was legendary. Carol Lawrence, who played Maria, remembers working with Robbins: ‘You have to understand that Jerry Robbins was the motivating force in all of this. He was the eternal perfectionist. The fact that one can never attain perfection did not deter him for a second. That was what he wanted and if he ended up killing you in the interim, well that was okay too!’¹⁶

West Side Story was cast from a pool of dancers. Even the romantic leads, Carol Lawrence and Larry Kert, had extensive dance training. In effect, Robbins choreographed every movement in the show. Dance provided motion in the action sequences (such as in the ‘Prologue’ and ‘The Rumble’), and served as an expressive device both for inarticulate characters (‘Dance at the Gym’ and ‘Cool’) and in numbers designed to release tension (such as in ‘I Feel Pretty’ and ‘Gee, Officer Krupke!’).¹⁷ How dependent the show was on dance became clear when the company arrived at the Washington theatre for its out-of-town try-out and discovered that the stage was significantly smaller than at the Winter Garden in New York, for which it was choreographed. Carol Lawrence remembers that Robbins had to rework the ballets and ‘there was so much dance, almost nothing but dance in the show.’¹⁸

Bernstein wrote the dance numbers as well as the songs. Robbins was a close collaborator, often suggesting musical changes and at times making them himself. Bernstein showed notable command of Latin dances and various types of jazz, producing a score that still sounds contemporary. Especially effective moments include the mambo in the ‘Dance at the Gym’ and the rich references to cool jazz in the song ‘Cool’. Bernstein uses melodies from the songs in dance sequences to great dramatic effect, such as the tune ‘Maria’ in the ‘Maria Cha-Cha’ of the ‘Dance at the Gym’ sequence, heard there before Tony sings the song for the first time. The song ‘Somewhere’ also appears in dance passages, tying the dream sequence between Tony and Maria to the show’s plot.¹⁹

West Side Story was Bernstein’s last important Broadway show, but Robbins continued to work there consistently into the mid-1960s. Two of his West Side Story collaborators – Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim – joined the composer Jule Styne on Gypsy in 1959. Choreography was far less important here than in some of his previous shows, but Robbins again showed his deft staging touch, beautifully evoking vaudeville and burlesque while allowing room for one of Ethel Merman’s greatest roles. His next show was Fiddler on the Roof (1964), another triumph of mood and atmosphere in a book musical. Along with the set designer Boris Aronson and the costume designer Patricia Zipprodt, Robbins convincingly recreated the Jewish shtetl of Anatevka. Robbins designed some of his most imaginative dances, using both Jewish and Russian elements to add to the show’s true-to-life quality. Two memorable sequences included a joint dance by Jewish and Russian characters in the inn and the bottle dance at the wedding. Robbins’s next, and last, Broadway show was the anthology Jerome Robbins’ Broadway of 1989.

The next great choreographer-director in the line of Agnes de Mille and Jerome Robbins was Bob Fosse (1927–87), a dancer from Chicago who began his career in vaudeville and burlesque.²⁰ As noted earlier, George Abbott was important to Fosse’s career development, hiring him as choreographer in The Pajama Game (1954). Unlike Robbins, Fosse came to Broadway through the world of ballroom and ethnic dances, showing the influence of Jack Cole’s jazz-dancing techniques. Fosse’s dances for The Pajama Game, especially in ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’, kept up the frenetic pace popularised by Abbott and Robbins. For the star Carol Haney, with whom Fosse had worked in Hollywood, he created ‘Steam Heat’, which she danced with Peter Gennaro and Buzz Miller. The show bubbled over with major dance numbers, including ‘Once a Year Day’, ‘7½ Cents’, and ‘I’ll Never Be Jealous Again’. Fosse also worked with Abbott in Damn Yankees (1955), which included a number of dances based upon typical baseball moves and ‘Who’s Got the Pain?’, conceived for Gwen Verdon, Fosse’s third wife and frequent collaborator. Fosse also worked on the film versions of The Pajama Game (1957) and Damn Yankees (1958). In 1956 Fosse assisted Robbins with the choreography for the Broadway show Bells Are Ringing, including the number ‘Mu Cha Cha’. Fosse’s last show with Abbott was New Girl in Town (1957): their break-up was caused by Abbott’s moral objections to Fosse’s dream ballet in a bordello. Fosse often cultivated the suggestive in his dance routines, perhaps an influence from his days in burlesque. Christine Colby Jacques, a dancer who worked with Fosse on Dancin’, notes that he often ironically parodied suggestive movements:

Plate 18 Ann Reinking, P. J. Mann and Christine Colby Jacques in ‘Stout-Hearted Men’, a dance number from Bob Fosse’s Dancin’, in 1979.

Photograph by Martha Swope © The New York Public Library

Fosse became Broadway’s third important choreographer-director in the late 1950s, starting with Redhead (1959), a vehicle for Gwen Verdon, including the dances ‘Pick-Pocket Tango’ and ‘The Uncle Sam Rag’. Fosse shared director’s credit with Abe Burrows in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961), where Fosse did the ‘musical staging’.

Fosse’s next show was Little Me (1962), starring Sid Caesar. Among the dances was the effective ‘Rich Kid’s Rag’. His next major work was for Gwen Verdon in Sweet Charity (1966), which Fosse conceived, directed and choreographed. His dances included ‘I’m a Brass Band’ for Gwen Verdon (with the male chorus performing his trademark posture of locked ankles and a backward lean), ‘Big Spender’ for the hostesses at the Fandango Club and ‘The Rich Man’s Frug’, a satire of recent dance fads in discothèques. Fosse struggled through the film version of Sweet Charity, but resurrected his career by directing the highly successful film adaptation of Cabaret (1972), winning the Oscar for best direction. He also directed and choreographed the film All That Jazz (1979), which many considered Fosse’s autobiography and included brilliant dancing segments.

Fosse’s last three Broadway shows included some of his most popular work. Pippin (1972) had an anemic plot, enlivened by Fosse with characters based upon commedia dell’arte clowns and several large-scale song and dance numbers, and assisted greatly by the energy and gregarious personality of Ben Vereen. Chicago (1975) was yet another show starring Gwen Verdon, joined by Chita Rivera. They played murderesses who form a nightclub act. Fosse’s staging was lean and effective with dance an integral part, led by Verdon and Rivera, who allowed Fosse to parody their fading youth in brief costumes and suggestive poses. The show is a series of vaudeville acts, each advancing the plot, with a band on stage. Fosse’s choreography made frequent use of the soft-shoe and Charleston, emphasising the 1920s setting. Dancin’ (1978) was Fosse’s answer to A Chorus Line: another show about dancing conceived in a workshop situation. Using music by many composers dating back to Bach, Dancin’ includes no plot and little singing. Critics offered mixed reactions but the audience did not, propelling Dancin’ to a run of 1,774 performances. The show was a monument to Fosse the entertainer and his eleventh Broadway hit in a row. His final Broadway show was the unsuccessful Big Deal (1986). A retrospective of Fosse’s work, Fosse, ran on Broadway and in the West End and toured in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Richard Maltby Jr, Ann Reinking and Chet Walker conceived it with the assistance of Gwen Verdon. Reinking has had a successful career as a choreographer, for example, following Fosse’s work in the hit revival of Chicago that ran for years on Broadway (starting in 1996) and in the West End (starting in 1997).

Another of Broadway’s important choreographer-directors was Gower Champion, who started as a Broadway dancer in the 1940s. He went to work in Hollywood, and then returned to Broadway as choreographer-director of Bye Bye Birdie (1960), a fairly simple show whose major dance was the wild ‘Shriners’ Ballet’. His next show was Carnival (1961), where Champion brought the audience into the action by dispensing with the curtain and using aisles for entrances and exits. The memorable choreography included the ‘Grand Imperial Cirque de Paris’. Champion’s biggest hit was Hello, Dolly! (1964). Although more famous for the title song and Carol Channing’s inimitable presence, the show benefitted enormously from Champion’s staging, which included extensive business from the dancers. He made Channing the centrepiece whenever possible and crafted one of the greatest entrances in theatre history with the hilarious ‘Waiter’s Gavotte’ before Dolly Levi descends the stairs at the Harmonia Gardens (see illustration in Chapter 10). The extensive use of choreography was also found in ‘It Takes a Woman’ and ‘Before the Parade Passes By’. Champion’s career continued for another fifteen years with both hits and flops, including I Do! I Do! (1966), The Act (1977) and 42nd Street (1980). The latter was an unabashed return to the days of tap-dancing chorus complete with story and music from the 1933 movie by the same name. Champion died the day the show opened.

Although not a choreographer-director, Hal Prince has played a major role in the development of the musical since the 1950s.²² Like Robbins, he learned his craft from George Abbott. He played a role in several of Abbott’s shows during the 1950s and emerged from the older man’s shadow when he produced West Side Story with Robert E. Griffith in 1957. Following Griffith’s death in 1961, Prince produced such shows as She Loves Me (1963) and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). He made his directing debut with Cabaret (1966), a book show that he treated like a concept musical, with an inspired staging that commented on the story through the cabaret entertainment. Its run of 1,166 performances did much to establish Prince as one of the most sought-after new directors. In 1970 he began his artistically successful collaboration in concept musicals with Stephen Sondheim in Company (1970), Follies (1971) and A Little Night Music (1973), three shows without conventional plots where staging played a huge role. Prince pushed staging nearly to extreme limits in Follies, helping to create the spectacular effect of a theatre crumbling, but at the same time losing $685,000 during the one-and-a-half-year run. In the 1980s and 1990s, Prince worked on some of Broadway’s biggest successes with scores by Andrew Lloyd Webber, but his artistic vision had the most influence in the 1960s and 1970s, when he played a major role in the continuing integration of music, dance and drama in the musical. Like Robbins, he wielded great power in a production and helped make the director one of Broadway’s most important figures.

The next important choreographer-director was Michael Bennett, creator of A Chorus Line. From a young age he showed great interest in dance and made his professional debut while still in his teens in a stock production of West Side Story. He later toured Europe in the show and became intimately familiar with his idol Robbins’s work. Bennett became a Broadway gypsy in the early 1960s but worked in no memorable shows. He choreographed stock productions and achieved his first Broadway credit in A Joyful Noise (1966), which ran for twelve performances.²³ Critics praised Bennett’s work, as they did his dances for Henry, Sweet Henry (1967), also a flop. Bennett finally worked on a hit in Promises, Promises (1968), directed by Robert Moore. The final version of the show included only one major dance number, but, as Ken Mandelbaum reports, ‘Bennett was able to make an enormous contribution to the show by weaving scene into scene, staging marvelous “crossovers”, with secretaries spinning through revolving doors in stylised movements reminiscent of … “go-go” steps.’²⁴ Promises, Promises was the first show where Donna McKechnie was Bennett’s principal female dancer. She eventually became for Bennett what Gwen Verdon was to Bob Fosse. Bennett and McKechnie were also married for a time.

Bennett’s next show as choreographer was Coco (1969), a vehicle for Katherine Hepburn directed by Michael Benthall. With both star and director working on their first musical, Bennett’s role was very large. He choreographed dances around a largely stationary, charismatic star and worked on book scenes; Mandelbaum called Coco Bennett’s ‘unofficial directorial debut’.²⁵ He gained valuable experience in the concept musical Company (1970), working with Hal Prince. Bennett had considerable influence on the show’s staging, especially in the musical numbers, such as ‘You Could Drive A Person Crazy’, ‘Side By Side By Side’, ‘What We Would Do Without You’ and ‘Tick Tock’, Donna McKechnie’s memorable solo dance. Bennett wanted to direct, but worked with Prince on Follies (1971), this time billed as co-director. Reviewers recognised his important contribution to the show’s staging, especially in numbers like ‘Who’s That Woman?’ Walter Kerr wrote in the Sunday Times: ‘Michael Bennett’s dazzling dance memories and perpetually musical staging are as seamlessly woven into [Sondheim’s musical] personality as they are into Prince’s immensely creative general direction.’²⁶

Bennett had become highly regarded for his imaginative staging ideas and was ready to direct on his own. Before A Chorus Line he directed two non-musical plays and Seesaw (1973), a troubled musical that he took over in Detroit and brought to Broadway for a respectable ten-month run. Bennett received full artistic control over the show and brought in his usual assistant choreographer Bob Avian along with the dancers and choreographers Tommy Tune, Baayork Lee, Thommie Walsh and others, several of whom later worked in A Chorus Line. Seesaw had a successful national tour and made Bennett a major player in the Broadway community.

A Chorus Line started with Bennett’s inspiration to do a show about dancers, a group he did not believe received its due on Broadway.²⁷ Along with Tony Stevens and Michon Peacock, with whom Bennett had worked in Seesaw, he arranged a meeting to discuss with eighteen colleagues on 18 January 1974. It was an extraordinary evening on which many felt moved to tell their life stories.²⁸ Bennett recorded the tales, as well as the conversations at the second such session on 8 February. After initial work with the tapes by Stevens, Peacock and the dancer-writer Nicholas Dante (whose story became the character Paul in the show), Bennett bought the rights to the raw material for A Chorus Line.

Bennett, Avian and Dante held more interviews and framed the show as an audition where dancers were encouraged to tell their stories. Early in the process Bennett decided to cast the show before even writing it and sold the workshop idea to Joseph Papp of the New York Shakespeare Festival. Papp agreed to pay Bennett and the dancers each $100 per week and let them work in his Newman Theater. Workshops had been used in plays for years, but A Chorus Line was the first musical produced through this method.

Bennett assembled his creative team. The co-writers were Bennett and Dante. Marvin Hamlisch became the composer and Edward Kleban the lyricist, both writing songs in the workshop. The first workshop, beginning in August 1974, lasted five weeks of fourteen-hour days, and after auditions included several of Bennett’s favourite dancers. At the end of the workshop, however, they had only staged a few numbers. A second workshop began in late December, for which Bennett brought in writer James Kirkwood to help Dante with the script. The second workshop yielded a workable show. Kirkwood recalled the process:

Along with the character Zach came Cassie, his ex-lover, a small plot around which the remainder of the show could form. The workshop was highly collaborative, contributing to the final product’s seamlessness. It is impossible to sort out who was responsible for each contribution. For example, Bennett often asked another dancer, such as Avian, McKechnie or Baayork Lee, to design steps that he could edit.

Formal rehearsals began in March 1975 with the first preview on 16 April 1975. The buzz around Broadway was that the show was a sure hit, and tickets at the tiny Newman Theater (299 seats) were scarce. The public remained infatuated with the show through the official off-Broadway opening on 21 May 1975 and the move to the Shubert Theatre for its Broadway opening on 19 October 1975. A Chorus Line ran for fifteen years, paving the way for the megamusicals of the 1980s and 1990s, but without the huge stage effects that mark many of those shows.

Bennett brought to A Chorus Line rich Broadway experience as a dancer, choreographer and director, and the vision to forge an unconventional show. Placing the story in the context of an audition gave the audience the feeling of peeking backstage, even though the device was essentially unrealistic. Of course no Broadway director would have cared about the life stories of auditioning dancers, but these real-life vignettes did help to give the show a sense of truth.

Although some of his signature numbers in other shows involved elaborate costumes and sets, Bennett realised that A Chorus Line would work best with a nearly bare stage and rehearsal clothes as costumes. He satisfied the audience’s craving for Broadway glitz in the closing number, ‘One’, performed by the entire cast in full costume, but that seemed appropriate because the chorus had been chosen and it was time for the show to open. What is missing in the closing number is the star behind whom one assumes the chorus might be dancing.

The show’s intensity came from its rapid pace and lack of intermission. In earlier shows Bennett had used ‘cinematic’ techniques of directing, fading from one scene to another through action on stage, as in the dancing secretaries between scenes in Promises, Promises. Such continuity and rapid pacing have long been part of the musical comedy, and were a major part of George Abbott’s work in the 1930s. Prince and Bennett used the technique in Follies, and in A Chorus Line one finds its full realisation. The curtain never does go down during the show. Bennett had found success with montage scenes before, and designed his masterpiece in the long ‘Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love’ (Martin Gottfried notes that it is one-fifth of the length of the script³⁰), where the characters explore the pains of adolescence. Much of the show’s action seems to occur in real time, a huge tribute to Bennett’s direction.

Another major factor in the show’s success is its saturation with dance and the various levels at which the audience perceives the dancing. One expects dancers to demonstrate their talent at an audition, so the audience accepts it as the show’s basic language and revels in watching those auditioning learn the steps, some succeeding and others cursing their efforts. Dance enters the characters’ stories as they are told, such as the delightful tap dance ‘I Can Do That’, in which Mike tells of his early and natural talent. Finally, dance allows characters to express deeper feelings, especially Cassie in ‘The Music and the Mirror’, McKechnie’s memorable solo number in which she shows that Cassie has the talent to be a solo dancer, even if that career has not worked out. Soon thereafter, the audience learns the difference between solo and chorus dancing, as Zach berates her for not dancing in unison with the others.³¹

Sometimes lost in the excitement about the show is the music, but this is partly because of the convincing way that songs and dance music are integrated with the rest of the show. In an essentially plotless musical a song cannot advance the narrative, but it can fit in with the dramatic concept of the moment, and all songs do. Most help tell a character’s story, the only real exceptions being ‘What I Did For Love’ and ‘One’. Some have criticised ‘What I Did For Love’ as Marvin Hamlisch’s crass attempt at a hit song. The lyricist, Edward Kleban, hated it and wanted something different,³² but the song is meaningful. After telling the most dramatic story of any of the characters, Paul falls and re-injures a knee. His career might be over. Zach asks the dancers what they will do when they can no longer dance. Diana’s reaction is this song, which, in the musical language of a 1970s pop anthem, answers the question by stating that one works for love of the art.

Like most Broadway scores, Hamlisch’s effort in A Chorus Line is eclectic, including a number of styles from twentieth-century popular music. ‘I Can Do That’, a tap number, has the rhythmic character of 1930s jazz with melodic blues touches. ‘One’, in the style of a 1930s soft-shoe, is a production number from the show the dancers are auditioning for, and excerpts from it sound throughout the score. ‘At the Ballet’ alternates between a rock beat and a waltz with effective musical representation of speech rhythms in the rock section. The montage ‘Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love’ is especially eclectic, befitting its length and complexity, with many characters interjecting segments of their stories. ‘Nothing’, part of the montage, combines an easy rock feel and the sound of a traditional Broadway ballad. The end of the montage borrows much from the sound of gospel music. ‘The Music and the Mirror’ provides another short tour of 1970s commercial music, moving mostly between jazz and funk.

It could be said that Hamlisch’s score is firmly rooted in the 1970s (as is obvious from the instrumentation on the original cast recording), but most Broadway scores are products of their time. A Chorus Line probably carries the deepest meaning for Americans who grew up in the two or three decades following World War II. Bennett made a show about himself and other people willing to make sacrifices to work in their chosen fields. Few who saw A Chorus Line were professional dancers, but almost everyone understands what it means to want something as badly as those dancers wanted a job. Despite his other shows, the most successful of which was Dreamgirls from 1981 (another masterpiece of integration of drama, music and dance), Bennett spent much of the remainder of his life overseeing A Chorus Line. He assembled touring companies and ensured that each company maintained the requisite energy and quality. A successful revival of A Chorus Line, directed by Bob Avian and with the choreography re-staged by Baayork Lee, opened on Broadway in October 2006 and ran 759 performances.

Tommy Tune is another important Broadway choreographer-director. Born in Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1939, Tune danced in a touring company of Irma La Douce in the early 1960s. He choreographed the touring version of Canterbury Tales in 1969 and appeared in films. His first major Broadway credit was the number ‘It’s Not Where You Start (It’s Where You Finish)’ in Seesaw, which Michael Bennett allowed Tune to choreograph. After five years without Broadway work, Tune began a string of hits as choreographer-director of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1978), which ran for 1,584 performances. Tune’s next success was sharing the choreography credit with Thommie Walsh in the New York version of the British show A Day in Hollywood, A Night in the Ukraine (1980). In 1982 he directed Nine, an adaptation of Federico Fellini’s film 8 ½. Walsh again shared the choreography credit and Tune’s innovative staging won a Tony. Tune won the Tony for Best Actor and shared the award for Best Choreography with Walsh for My One and Only (1983), a substantial reworking of Funny Face (1927). Tune then won Tonys for both Choreography and Direction in Grand Hotel (1989) and The Will Rogers Follies (1991). In both of these shows, Tune demonstrated his talent for mining the history of American entertainment for ideas and styles and then adding his own special energy and panache.

Choreographers and directors continue to strive to make the songs and dances of a Broadway score an integral part of the plot rather than a distraction from it. Examples of successful later efforts were Ragtime (1998), directed by Frank Galati with choreography by Graciela Daniele, and Wicked (2003), directed by Joe Mantello with choreography by Wayne Cilento. Although Wicked is not a huge dancing show, Cilento’s contribution to the stage movement is very important to the overall appeal. The road from Victor Herbert’s The Lady of the Slipper to the present is long and winding, but most stops along the way were attempts to improve the artistic integration of the Broadway musical: a seminal trend in the genre’s history.