Originally Presented at the International Conference/Festival "Opera and Musical Theater in the United States" (Murfreesboro, TN, March 24-25, 2018)

I. Introduction

A Chorus Line has long stood as a classic of American musical theatre. It opened at the Public Theatre in New York in 1975 and very shortly after moved to the Shubert Theatre on Broadway. It was a smash hit, winning nine Tony awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1975. It remained on Broadway for fifteen years, closing in 1990 after running for more than 6000 performances. The show about a show dramatizes the audition process for a set of singers and dancers to join the background chorus of an unnamed work in development. Example Stage depicts the stage as it appears for most of the show. It is almost completely bare. Aside from the actors, the only detail that registers is a bold white line. The panels on the back wall appear black at first, but are actually periaktoids that can rotate, transforming into a mirrored surface or – during the final number – a dazzling deco display illuminated by white lights (Mandelbaum, 1989, 134).

The minimalist set design makes a powerful statement: this is not a show about artifice. It is about the raw essence of things, the parts of the psyche that reside most deeply within us.

A great many musical theatre scholars have written on A Chorus Line (ACL). It is a cultural milestone of the 1970s that focuses on the real-life struggles of young adults. Their anxieties about finding work, love, acceptance, and purpose are near-universal. Although the show is set in New York City, its characters hail from across the country and from all walks of life. A modest degree of diversity is built into the show as well: three of the sixteen characters are non-white minorities and two are gay men. What makes these character design choices more significant is the fact that their differences are, without exception, respected. The minority characters are candid about their identities and experiences, and at all times are fully accepted as they are by their fictionalized stage mates.

Most published analyses of A Chorus Line concentrate on its socio-political aspects. In her book, Changed for Good, Stacy Wolf identifies the show as a product of the 1970s, a time at which the “progressive social movements of the 1960s including the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, and the early gay rights movement. . . filtered into broader consciousness” (2011, 92-93). The chapter segment Wolf dedicates to A Chorus Line interrogates the perennial question of how an individual should relate to a group: is it better to stand out from the chorus or to conform? (2011, 119; see also Adler 1980, 371). Pursuit of the former, in the case of the hopefuls auditioning, is risky but offers a chance at fame. Pursuit of the latter is more likely to yield a steady paycheck and membership in a community. . . but also more likely to end in consignment to anonymity. Raymond Knapp, also speaking to that era’s increasing social awareness of non-mainstream identities, examines the show’s ambivalent treatment of male homosexuality. He cites the character of Paul, who delivers a wrenching monologue about his experiences working as a drag review dancer and being disowned by his family. The sympathetic portrayal of this character is in some ways forward-thinking for the time. Regrettably, the show ends up capitulating to the cliché, authorial “punishment trope” from literature that causes those following “deviant” lifestyles to suffer misfortune (Knapp 2006, 239). In this case, Paul eventually injures himself and must exit the audition.

In addition to these sources, A Chorus Line is treated at length in many general texts on film and stage theory. The show’s heavy reliance on mirrors, in particular, has been seized on by many scholars as a tool for understanding how gaze and reflection contribute to the forging of character identities. In separate essays, Thomas Adler (1980) and Zachary Dunbar (2010) widen this dynamic to include audience members who, by virtue of the upstage mirrors, can view themselves at the same time they are thrust closer into the communal audition experience. The paired inquiries from Adler and Dunbar impressively broaden the scope of Michael Bennett’s meta-theatric offering, as the images in its hall of mirrors echo and re-echo.

Despite the considerable body of research on A Chorus Line, its music has been afforded little analytic scrutiny. This is surprising, first, given the recent proliferation of music theory studies of the musical-theatre genre in general. Prominent examples include investigations into the expressive effects of directed modulatory tonal schemes (Buchler 2008 and Blustein 2015) as well as long-range ascending (“aspirational”) melodies in classic works of musical theatre (Buchler 2015). It is further surprising in light of ACL’s prominence within this genre. This show is not only ambitious culturally, but narratively and musically as well. As subsequent discussion will illustrate, A Chorus Line simultaneously traverses a number of weighty story arcs concerning aging, the meaning and purpose of creating art, and the importance of family.

The scaffolding for this narrative and emotional content is provided by Marvin Hamlisch’s complex, ensemble-driven score. For more than half of the songs, successive lines of text are alternately sung, spoken, and shouted by the various hopefuls as they express present feelings and relive memories. The number that perhaps best exemplifies this characterization is “Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen,” the expansive, ten-minute medley that occupies the approximate centre of the program. The song that least exemplifies it is “One,” the diegetic Broadway number that the cast rehearses over the course of the show, performing it in full at the end.

The present essay will concentrate on “At the Ballet,” another pivotal ensemble number from A Chorus Line. Its dimensions are more modest than those of “Hello Twelve:” it is shorter in duration and is sung by a vocal trio rather than the full company. This relative compactness allows its singular theme of surrogate family to emerge more clearly. In the song, three female characters, Sheila, Bebe, and Maggie, reflect on the shared experience of choosing a life in ballet over a dysfunctional home life. Their accounts revolve around childhood wounds that are painted in vivid musical flashbacks.

The close reading to follow traces the trio’s psychological and emotional journey through examination of the “At the Ballet’s” text, form, motivic content, and staging. This multifaceted approach, informed by book, score, and mise-en scène, is here advanced, first, as a powerful model for musical theatre analysis. As for the more specific goals for analysing this piece, these shall be twofold. The primary aim will be to illustrate how “At the Ballet” builds a central narrative of assembling a family by means of its text, music, and staging. These findings in hand, the essay will turn in the concluding section to the secondary goal of advancing a new narrative reading of A Chorus Line.

II. The Genesis of A Chorus Line and “At the Ballet”

At the close of the show’s first number, A Chorus Line lays bare its meta-musical-theatre conceit. Speaking from offstage, the director, Zach, tells the sixteen remaining hopefuls that for this audition they will be required to divulge personal details about their pasts. His reason for this is ostensibly to foster cast cohesion:

I’m looking for a strong dancing chorus. I need people that look terrific together – and that can work together as a group. But there are some small parts that have to be played by the dancers I hire. . . I don’t want to give you just a few lines to read. I think it would be better if I knew something about you – about your personalities. So, I’m going to ask you some questions. I want to hear you talk. Treat it like an interview. I don’t want you to think you have to perform. I just want to hear you talk and be yourselves. . . Bennett and Dante (1985, 16-17)

The hopefuls are taken aback by this unconventional request, but comply. They stand on the empty stage’s white, bold line and deliver. The drama unfolds from that point as a set of vignettes that are at turns amusing, reflective, heart-breaking and hopeful.

The success of ACL seems intrinsically linked to its unique genesis. The original concept for the show came from Michon Peacock, an assistant to the choreographer Tony Stevens. In the wake of a short-lived musical that had closed around them, they began to discuss what it might mean to develop a company “composed completely of dancers, who would write, produce, direct, design, and choreograph their own shows” (Flinn 1989, 8). Peacock and Stevens decided early on to bring Michael Bennett on to their project. Bennett was already established as one of the most dynamic and imaginative choreographers in New York, having achieved great success as the stager for the 1968 hit Promises, Promises and for two Sondheim vehicles, Company and Follies (Mandelbaum 1989). Very early on in their planning, the trio of Peacock, Stevens, and Bennett determined that the subject of their first show would be about “gypsies.” That term, one with which all three identified, refers to the multi-talented performers who “are singers and actors as well as dancers, [who] play characters more closely related to real life” than those found in ballet or modern dance (Flinn 1989, 8). Due to the nature of the background roles they play, gypsies are more or less interchangeable cast members who migrate all about the city without a permanent theatre home.

To gather material for the show, the creators called two “workshop” sessions, inviting professional dancers to speak in groups about their backgrounds and experiences.[1] The tone was open and confessional, yielding emotional and revealing accounts of, among other things, abandonment, financial struggle, breaking the colour barrier, and overcoming emotional abuse. All that was said was recorded, transcribed, and mined for use in the script. As a result, “there is a sincerity to the dialog in A Chorus Line unequalled by any. . . before or since.” [2] (Martin 1997, 266). Only after a significant body of material had been processed was it possible to bring a composer on to the project. Marvin Hamlisch had recently gained national prominence for scoring a series of Hollywood hits. He had won three Oscar awards by that time, one for The Sting and two for the Barbra Streisand film, The Way We Were. In 1974, Hamlisch received a call from Michael Bennett, telling him to “drop everything” and come to New York for a new project (Hamlisch 1992, 137). He did so. Shortly after, he was joined by lyricist Ed Kleban.

Hamlisch reports that the composition process, which began in earnest in June of that same year, began with surveying the transcripts for “the stories that would musicalize best and the ideas [that were] the most intriguing about each character” (1992, 143.) August saw two watershed developments in the score’s development. The first occurred when the lyricist identified the hopefuls’ “endless desperation” for work as their primary motivation. A job was not a want, but a need, which crystalized for Ed Kleban in the refrain he developed for Song 1, “God, I Hope I Get It” (1992, 145).[3] The other occurred when Hamlisch and Kleban conceived of a song that would tie together three of the women’s stories from the workshops. Kelly Bishop’s “mother had wanted to be a dancer but dropped out in favour of a marriage that was, ultimately, a failure.” This story would ultimately be related by the character Sheila Bryant. Donna McKechnie of her father abandoning their family, leaving her to dance around the room as a child holding on to “an imaginary Indian chief” to fill the void he left. Her past served as the foundation for Maggie Winslow (Flinn 1989, 26-29). The last character in the trio is Bebe, whose mother made her feel unattractive growing up. This character was compiled from stories contributed both by Michon Peacock and Kelly Bishop.

The second song resulting from this flurry of activity was “At the Ballet.” The song was not only impeccably crafted and sincere; it proved critically important in the evolution of A Chorus Line, which, in the summer of 1974, was still in early development. Ed Kleban remarked,

It was comparatively easy to write ‘Ballet’ because it was from the gut. We were writing a great deal of genuine emotion and feeling. It’s my favorite lyric in the show, and as a song, it brought out the best of both Marvin and myself. It’s at the centre of the score, and I think it’s a wonderful theatre song (Mandelbaum, 1989, 163) 

Stacy Wolf relates Marvin Hamlisch’s view, which accords closely: “. . .The song set the tone for all the music in the show; once [it] was written, the creators understood the shape and colour of the piece as a whole.” (2001, 122). Rounding out these accounts is Co-choreographer Bob Avian’s remembrance of Bennett’s reaction. “When Marvin played the song for us, Michael cried,” Avian recalled; “He said, ‘That’s it. That’s what I want the score to sound like’” (Riedel 2012).

These closely-aligned accounts allow us to locate “At the Ballet” at the spiritual heart of A Chorus Line. In preparing to analyse this number, we note its two most prominent themes. One centres around the women’s choice to create a new family; the other speaks to the transcendent power of dance. Bennett identified foremost as a choreographer, which may explain in part the intensity of his initial response to “At the Ballet.”  As the song’s text, music, and staging make clear, it was the act of joining the ballet that afforded these women their new “home” and, in the end, their salvation.

III. A View of A Chorus Line through the Lens of “At the Ballet”

The musical A Chorus Line was a runaway success both on Broadway and as a soundtrack recording. The cast album went gold in 1977 and double platinum in the year 2000. For more than four decades, audiences have celebrated the show for its music, emotion, and energy. Yet of its many attributes that are routinely praised, there is one that consistently escapes mention, that being story line.

I am not aware of any criticism of A Chorus Line that turns on nor spends much time acknowledging its storytelling machinery. This makes sense in light of its aforementioned narrative restrictions: the story takes place in a single day and communicates no clear sense of protagonist(s) versus antagonist(s). There is also the matter of the show’s songs, which concentrate more on grand themes – growing up, anxiety, gender, identity – than on dramatic events pertaining to the audition. These characteristics have led many critics and scholars to deem A Chorus Line a concept musical, a theatre genre in which storyline plays a subordinate role to the communication of a grand metaphor about life or society.[4]

This view is apt. It moreover helps to explain the misfire that was the 1985 film version of ACL released by Columbia Pictures. A number of critics offered praise of director Robert Attenborough’s attempt to move the show from stage to screen. Roger Ebert described it as an “intelligent and compelling movie musical” adaptation, if not a fully authentic one: his review notes the role the newly-added, outside-the-theatre flashbacks play in elevating the importance of Zach and Cassie’s story. Most other reviewers, in contrast, felt that the movie failed to capture the magic of ACL on stage. Sheila Benson of The Los Angeles Times found the film to be a “stately and fairly slavish representation.” David Sterritt, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, opined: “The show's format proves too slippery for the director to manage properly. The stagebound setting gets boring; the action doesn't build a steady momentum; and the characters do far too much hanging around until the camera's ready to point at them again.”[5]

In response to negative criticism, Attenborough attempted to deflect some blame to the film’s producers, noting that he did not have final say on all the material included in the final cut (Siskel 1985). This defence, of course, does not address the more fundamental issue of his potential misreading of the show. In a televised interview, Attenborough overlooked A Chorus Line’s rich, metaphorical content in favour of one or two simplistic stories, explaining it to be “a show about kids trying to break into show business” (Rowan 2015, 224). Kelly Bishop, who helped formulate the role of Sheila in the original Broadway production, saw that interview and was inclined to disagree:

“I almost tossed my TV out the window; I mean what an idiot! It’s about veteran dancers looking for one last job before it’s too late for them to dance anymore. No wonder the film sucked!” (Rowan 2015, 224).

Delectable as Bishop’s criticism is, it is truer to say there is room for both Attenborough’s and her takes to be correct. The validity of each depends on what stage of life a dancer inhabits.[6] Bob Avian offers a cogent description of A Chorus Line’s formal organization:

It’s a composite evening about the life of a dancer, which most people don’t realize. The first story is about a four-year-old, the next about an eight-year-old, the next is about an eleven-year old, the next is about adolescence, and so on, getting older and older. That’s how Michael [Bennett] found the construction for it, and how he knew which story should come next. (Mandelbaum 1989, 160).

The work’s multi-character framework, which views the life of a dancer from multiple perspectives, is what allows it to explore so many themes. A Chorus Line is indeed a musical that enfolds multiple concepts, among them aging, experience, and the life of the artist.                   

It is altogether appropriate in analysis to seek out and reflect on a concept musical’s core metaphorical content. Such investigations, however, should not fully preclude discussion of its dramatic workings. It should be kept in mind that the creators of A Chorus Line were mindful in dedicating significant portions of dialog and stage time to advancing a number of narrative threads. This means that what happens in the show matter, too.

In the case of ACL, a long tradition of debate surrounding the show’s concept(s) has drawn attention almost entirely away from consideration of its dramatic workings. Compounding this situation is the high degree of ambiguity about how its stories end. In both of these regards, awareness of the work’s primary themes can help to resuscitate appreciation of the show’s plot content. In this last section, the new reading offered on A Chorus Line’s story turns on the theme of family that emerged from the analysis of “At the Ballet.”

We begin by reviewing the dramatic content of the show and its narrative problems. Over the course of the performance, three stories emerge as central. Plot 1, noted in this essay’s Introduction, concerns Paul. Plot 2 centres on Cassie, the oldest hopeful by far, who has a romantic history with the director. After a failed attempt at a career on screen in California, her goal is to start over in New York and to be given the chance to dance for people again. Plot 3, the grandest overarching storyline, concerns the audition itself, the process by which the “kids” and Cassie progress from “Hope,” through two stages of cuts, to the ultimate reward of winning the job.

The perennial challenge in discerning a sense of story in ACL is that all of these plots, at first glance, seemingly fail to resolve. Paul’s narrative is the barest. He sings a special solo verse in the first number, delivers a powerful monologue at the show’s midpoint, then suffers an injury that will disqualify him from consideration. His misfortune serves as a catalyst for a group discussion that leads the hopefuls to sing their last ode to dance, “What I Did for Love”; however, no further details about him or his story are ever divulged. Paul simply disappears. The story of Cassie and Zack’s battling wills spans the near length of the show, starting with her late arrival to the audition and her entreaty – denied, embarrassingly, in front of everyone – for private audience with him. Very near the end of the show, Cassie and Zach engage in a heated dialog that hashes out their past, her decision to leave him, and their disagreements about the importance of ambition. At first glance, this late confrontation seems to end with only a minor capitulation from Zach. He tells her to go downstairs to learn the last number, thus allowing her to continue with the audition.

With regard to Plot 3, some may object that that story is brought to a satisfying conclusion. A brief reconsideration of the details of that story, however, puncture that claim. Somewhere past A Chorus Line’s two-hour mark, the sixteen remaining hopefuls take their places on the line a final time, and Zach calls on eight of them to step forward. For first-time audience members, a different emotion is provoked at the mention of each name. They are likely to feel a momentary sense of celebration that a favourite of theirs has been chosen, or a flash of outrage that someone less talented or worthy was selected. Moments later, Zach’s last emotionally-manipulative deception is revealed: “Front line, thank you very much, thank you, I’m sorry” (Bennett and Dante (1985, 72). In a departure from earlier procedure, this time it is the ones remaining on the line that are the lucky eight.

This elimination scene is dramatic, but it, too, has a narrative problem. The show ends twenty seconds after it, with the performance of Number 26, “Bows.” (Tellingly, the last number is not titled “One,” in the the Playbill, even though that is the title of the song they perform.) As such, the show provides no opportunity for the audience to process the effects of its concluding event. The manner in which A Chorus Line closes is far less like a work of art and more like mundane reality. The cast members react to their news and leave the stage, and then the audition is simply over.

Through appeal to the notion of family, each supposedly-problematic narrative listed above can be seen recontextually as resolved. It cannot be denied that Paul’s story as it pertains to the audition is cut short. Yet other details point to his traversing and completing a secondary story arc. Paul’s first, expressive solo occurs as a coda to the show’s first number. In this introspective verse, he expresses his main fear and desire first, which is that expressing his true identity will cause rejection by a parental figure. Unlike the other hopefuls, his desire for work is secondary, only stated at the end.

“Who am I, anyway? Am I my resume? That is a picture of a person I don’t know. What does he [Zach, the director] want from me? What should I try to be? So many faces all around, and here we go. I need this job. Oh God, I need this show. (Bennett and Dante 1985, 22)

In his late monologue, the audience comes to learn the reason for Paul’s worry. When he was in his teens, his parents’ discovery of his work in a drag show on 42nd Street resulted in his birth family rejecting him. His worry on the day of the audition is that discovery of his past work at the undignified Jewel Box Theatre will cost him a place in this production. Paul breaks down while describing the hurt of his original rejection, and Zach’s response is to emerge on stage and to tenderly hug him. The moment of pure, unqualified acceptance re-enacts the past, but allows for a critical correction in which a paternal figure – upon learning the full truth about Paul – draws him closer in. Despite the injury that will sideline Paul from work, his worries concerning his membership in his theatre family and his place in its home are powerfully set to rest.

The issue of family informs Cassie’s story both in terms of medium and message. Cassie’s first argument that she should be allowed to join the troupe takes the form of an extended song and dance number, “The Music and the Mirror.” This appeal, that dance gives her life meaning, is not sufficient to sway Zach. She attempts to convince him again late in the show, precipitating an argument that puts them both on stage in the presence of the hopefuls practicing the song, “One.” The younger players, the “kids,” are rehearsing dutifully as they are told. Cassie and Zach, the older and more experienced artists, fill out the audience’s impression of the showbiz family by pulling back the curtain on what a minor row between “Mom and Dad” might look like.

Critically, at this point, Cassie adopts a new argument strategy. When Zach restates his belief that she doesn’t belong in a chorus line, she responds that she’d “be proud to be one of them. They’re wonderful.” Upon hearing Zach’s protest that she is special compared to them, she responds as follows:

“No, we’re all special. He’s special – she’s special. And Sheila – and Richie, and  Connie. They’re all special. I’d be happy dancing in that line. Yes, I would. And I’ll take chorus, if you’ll take me” (Bennett and Dante 1985, 122.)

Where basing her previous case on self-actualization failed, she now appeals to the importance of belonging to a group. A return to performance with these little-known dancers is not in any way a punishment for her, but something she desires and deserves. This argument is sufficient to change Zach’s mind, in that it removes the last barrier to her being considered an equal with the hopefuls. As such, Cassie’s story arc properly ends here, with her being allowed to take her place alongside her family.

The theme of family is perhaps best suited for resolving the narrative problem in Plot 3 of ACL’s sudden ending. Over the course of the evening, it is established that the players embody family. Even at the start of the day, the younger hopefuls are full siblings. This is evident not merely from their disclosures of shared experiences, but from the rawness and sincerity of their descriptions. These people are likely more honest with each other than they ever would be with strangers. Zach and Cassie are members of the family, too, but to a lesser extent. Their remove is indicated in part by them being situated temporally and spatially apart from the “kids,” and in part by their confiding only in each other.

The late permission given to Cassie to audition is the first indication that crossing back over to full family status is possible. An unspoken and more dramatic indication follows almost immediately after, when all seventeen of the original dancers perform the final number. The actor playing Paul is among them. So, remarkably, is Zach. His appearance on the line constitutes a last erasure of boundaries between age, success, and experience. The message conveyed is that all of the players are equal.

Viewing the company in this way radically rewrites the last narrative event of the show and the entirety of the main plot. The casting and staging of the final number rejects the notion that the specific outcome of the audition was relevant. But clearly something dramatic has happened: what might that be? Sensitive viewers, choosing to revisit the experience of the final cut event, may come to realize A Chorus Line’s final narrative act is to cut them from the production.[7] The time that the hopefuls depart the theatre at the close of the day marks the last chance for the audience-outsiders to learn anything about or experience anything with the players. As to what the future holds for the protagonists, the specifics of their successes or failures pale in significance next to the meaning of their primary, familial bond.

Michael Bennett once expressed a hope that the concluding performance of “One” – which robs the performers of individuality, transforming them into a soulless, mechanized mass entity – would horrify audiences and spell the end of chorus lines forever.[8] It clearly did not have that effect. The fact that “One” emerged as a crowd-pleaser and the show’s only true standalone hit could be read as a failure on Bennett’s part to execute his expressly political agenda. In the present, alternate reading, the curtain call event takes on a positive aspect, affirming the primacy of the discovered family above all. Scott McMillin comments at length on the inherent paradox of the final number, in which the cast celebrates and presumably supports a “singular sensation,” a stage star, who never appears (2006, 99-100). But in a show about family, why should she? It may be true that show business has moguls and celebrities that get top billing. A true family, on the other hand, has no star.  

Notes:

[1] See Viagas, Lee, and Walsh 2006. An awareness of the manner in which Bennett collected this raw material magnifies the shows’s reflexive, self-aware aspect considerably. The character of Zach becomes a loose stand-in for Bennett the impresario, blending the attributes of the real and fictionalized directors. A number of Bennett’s attributes manifest in Zach, including his grand ambition, his mania for perfection in performance, and – as to be described further below – his cruelty.

[2] One of the most significant segments of dialog was supplied by Nick Dante at the workshops. His life story – involving a “difficult childhood, growing up a sexual misfit in the fifties, and dancing in tawdry drag show” –eventually emerged with little emendation as the character Paul’s monologue. Dante later expressed a belief that the main reason he was brought on as co-writer of the book was because Bennett wanted to use his story in the show (Mandelbaum 1989, 109-110). 

[3] Viagas, Lee, and Walsh further praise the crafting of this lyric, noting the care it takes “not to merely say, ‘I want this job,’ but rather: “Oh God, I need this job. I’ve got to get this job” (2006, 25).

[4] Aside from entertainment, a primary function of the concept musicals Cabaret and Chicago is social commentary. As Scott McMillan explains, these shows incorporate exaggerated, Vaudevillian performances to reflect on a rising Nazi regime in the one case and a corrupt justice system in the other (2006, 23). The shows explicitly implicate the public’s thirst for entertainment as contributing to the rise of these malevolent institutions. As a result, audiences are shocked into realizing their faux-complicitness in the drama unfolding before them, and thus their potential, actual complicitness in similar dramas playing out in the real world.

[5] Cy Feuer, the film’s producer, noted a smooth production experience in which “the big scenes with all the actors seemed to work. . . It was all very, very good.” Yet the magic failed to translate: “We thought that we were making a decent film. But it wasn’t. . . we took a first-rate play and made a second-rate movie” (Feuer 2003, 271-2).

[6] Tom Rowan sensitively notes that “An actor playing Mark or Bebe, both Broadway newcomers, might have been more inclined to agree with Attenborough, but the show covers a broad range of dancers’ experiences” (2015, §19).

[7] Notably, even the sixteen extras “cut” from the show after the first number “are not able to go home after the opening.” Instead, they are required to contribute their voices from backstage until the show’s conclusion (Mandelbaum 1989, 164).

[8] This account, reported in Flinn 1989, is enriched by mention of the fact that the costume design and “robot-like” choreography for “Bows” were directly inspired by the Fritz Lang film, Metropolis (117).

Works Cited:

A Chorus Line 40th Anniversary Celebration (sound recording). 2015. Marvin Hamlisc and Edward Kleban. New York: Masterworks Broadway.

A Chorus Line. By James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante. Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, New York,

Adler, Thomas P. 1980-81. “The Mirror as Stage Prop in Modern Drama.” Comparative Drama 14/4: 355-373.

Bennett, Michael and Dante, Nicholas, with James Kirkwood, Marvin Hamlisch, and Edward Kleban. A Chorus Line. New York: Tams-Witmark, 1985.

Benson, Sheila. “‘Chorus Line Trips on Screen” (Review). The Los Angeles Times. Dec. 12, 1985.

Blustein, Nathan Beary. 2015. “Stepwise Modulation as a Dramatic Device for Toni Return in Musical Theatre Songs.” Paper presented at Society for Music Theory Annual Conference, Society for Music Theory, St. Louis, MO.

Buchler, Michael. 2008. “Modulation as a Dramatic Agent in Frank Loesser’s Broadwa Songs.” Music Theory Spectrum 30/1: 35-60).

-----. 2015. “When You Wish Upon A Star Your Melody Ascends: Aspirational Disney Songs and the Ascending Urlinie.” Paper presented at Society for Music Theory Annual Conference, Society for Music Theory, St. Louis, MO.

Dunbar, Zachary. 2010. “Dionysian Reflections upon A Chorus Line.” Studies in Musical Theatre 4/2: 155-169.

Ebert, Roger. A Chorus Line (review). Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 20, 1985.

Feuer, Cy, with Ken Gross. 2003. I Got the Show Right Here: The Amazing True Story of How an Obscure Brooklyn Horn Player Became the Last Great Broadway Showman.” New York: Simon and Schuster.

Flinn, Denny Martin. 1989. What They Did for Love: The Untold Story Behind the Making of A Chorus Line. New York: Bantam Books.

Hamlisch, Marvin. 1992. The Way I Was. New York: Scribner’s.

Hou, David. http://dartcritics.com/2016/08/08/dynamic-and-dazzling-stratford-festivals-a-chorus-line-transcends-expectations/. Accessed 1/6/19.

Knapp, Raymond. 2006. The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Mandelbaum, Ken (1990). A Chorus Line and the Musicals of Michael Bennett. St. Martins Press.

McMillin, Scott. 2006. The Musical as Drama. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Riedel, Michal. 2012. “Genius’ Greatest Hit Saved Broadway.” New York Post, August 8 https://nypost.com/2012/08/08/genius-greatest-hit-saved-broadway/. Accessed 4/4/19.

Rowan, Tom. 2015. A Chorus Line FAQ: All that’s Left to Know about Broadway’s Singular Sensation. Milwaukee, WI: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books.

Siskel, Gene. 1985. “A Few Changes Can’t Ruin the Story of A Chorus Line.” The Chicago Tribune, December 20.

Stempel, Larry. 2010. Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theatre. New York: W.W. Norton.

Sterritt, David. 1985 `A Chorus Line': lots of legs, but not much heart.’ Christian Science Monitor, December 10.

Viagas, Robert, Lee Baayork, and Thommie Walsh. 2006. On the Line: The Creation of A Chorus Line, 2nd ed., New Jersey: Limelight Editions.

Wolf, Stacy. 2011. Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical. New York: Oxford University Press.

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