Every Little Step

Having been a theater student in college and rubbing elbows with those who aspired to be on the stage, I watched Every Little Step with a great deal of fascination and emotion. The film is a documentary that attempts to do two things: relate the origins of the watershed Broadway musical A Chorus Line, and document the casting for a revival of the show in 2006. Both of these documentary styles are very familiar, as "making of" featurettes are common on DVDs, and the winnowing nature of auditions unfortunately recall all sorts of reality shows on television.

Unlike most reality shows, though, those auditioning for A Chorus Line are professionals at the top of the game (although there are a few newcomers). They're not talentless fame-whores chomping on insects for cash, they are devoted practitioners of the art of dance who, for the most part, toil in anonymity. What makes auditioning for this particular show different is that the action of A Chorus Line is an audition itself.

Michael Bennett conceived of A Chorus Line in the mid-seventies. He gathered a few dozen Broadway gypsies and tape-recorded a twelve-hour bull session of the dancers talking about their lives. He turned these stories into a show, which was produced by the legendary impresario Joe Papp. It was unusual for the time, as it was far removed from traditional book musicals, but it swept the Tony Awards, won a Pulitzer Prize for drama, and ran for fifteen years (at the time it was the longest-running musical in Broadway history--it's number four now). Essentially, A Chorus Line is a valentine to dancers who are the best in the country but still have to endure the brutal auditioning process. They don't do it for riches, as the show's ballad goes, they do it for love.

The history of the show, with ancient video clips of the original show, plus interviews with composer Marvin Hamlisch (always a good interview) and star Donna McKechnie, is interspersed with the story of the revival auditions. The director is Bob Avian, who was Bennett's co-choreographer from the original production. The revival's choreographer is Bayoork Lee, who was in the original cast. They start with an open call of 3,000, and the filmmakers follow a select number of dancers through the process, including a girl who rides into the city on the bus from New Jersey, and has never been in a Broadway show before. In this respect the film resembles documentaries like Spellbound, about spelling bee kids.

Every Little Step isn't as cut and dried as Spellbound is, though. Aside from Jessica, the Jersey Girl, many of the performers drift in and out of the action. We really see the process for only a few characters, and get to hear those particular numbers several times, while other songs are eluded to and never heard. The most focus is on the competition for Val, who sings "Dance 10, Looks 3," the cynical Sheila, who sings "At the Ballet," and the lead role of Cassie. Up for that role is Charlotte D'Amboise, something of a name on Broadway, but she still has to audition anyway.

The ups and downs of the auditioning are mesmerizing. The director and his cohorts watch with a mixture of empathy and steely-eyed criticism. One young man brings them to tears with his monologue, and another woman asks to hear whether she got the part or not immediately. The casting director is sent to give her the bad news, and someone whispers that he may come back with an ax in his head. The emotions are raw--one dancer is told, during a call-back, to do what she did last summer during a previous round, but she has no memory of how she did it then, and another despairs that she really needs this job (this of course, is a refrain heard in the opening number of the show) because she is out of unemployment.

The resolution of the film, when we see who gets cast and who doesn't, is exhilarating. There is so much joy in the good news, but for every person cast there is the heartbreak of who doesn't get cast. It's hard not to be moved by the entire thing, and then realize that this happens for every Broadway show, over and over again.

As much of a pleasure this film is, it is not perfect by any means. It is not virtuosic filmmaking. Shot with handheld cameras, the directors stay out of the way and let the story take center stage, but at times it looks pretty shoddy. They even keep in a couple of scenes where an interview subject hits some equipment, as if to say, "See! This is real!" Also, if you have no knowledge of A Chorus Line you may be lost, as a lot of shorthand is used. Some characters are completely ignored, and we don't even know who gets cast in some of the featured roles (although we see who doesn't get cast).

Still, this film will easily be remembered by me at year's end as one of the best. The crowd I was with stayed firmly in their seats during the closing credits, as "What I Did For Love" plays on the soundtrack. Who could walk out on that beautiful song?