When A Chorus Line premiered in 1975, it shattered every convention of the American musical. There was no curtain and essentially no set, just a bare stage painted across with a single white line and moveable dance mirrors. There were no real costumes other than the finale’s top hats and spangled suits. There was no intermission and, most incredulously, no star. The plot was simple, almost non-existent—25 dancers trying out for eight spots in the chorus for a new Broadway musical. The content was provocative and intensely personal. The dancers revealed their own stories, raw, emotional and brutally honest, woven seamlessly into a groundbreaking piece of musical theater. Audiences and critics were captivated.

As Clive Barnes, the powerful critic for the New York Times, said in his review, “We have for years been hearing about innovative musicals; now Mr. Bennett has really innovated one….The conservative word for A Chorus Line might be tremendous.”

Director-choreographer Michael Bennett, a former chorus dancer, wanted to pay tribute to Broadway’s “gypsies,” the dancers who move from one show to another, working tirelessly to support or frame the “star,” often in pain and risking permanent injury.

“Dancers kill themselves in a show,” Bennett had said. “They’re always the low man on the totem pole. They work like dogs, they get less money than anybody else, and they don’t get any real credit. I want to do a show where the dancers are the story.”

Typically, the choreography for a show is created after the show is developed. For A Chorus Line, Bennett wanted the dance to be more than part of characters. He wanted it to actually be the characters. As he once said, “the dancing in this particular musical needed to come first, because the dancing was the plot of the musical; it wasn’t something that could be done after the fact.” That meant the music didn’t come first.

Composer Marvin Hamlisch and lyricist Edward Kleban were unlikely creative collaborators. Hamlisch was a child prodigy, attended Julliard, as a teenager wrote pop tunes for Lesley Gore, and by 1974 at age 30 had been awarded two Academy awards and Grammy Awards for the theme songs to The Way We Were and The Sting (adapting Scott Joplin’s "The Entertainer.”) A former Columbia Records producer, Kleban was a composer as well as a lyricist, an intellectual writer known for songs that blended music and dramatic monologues about personal problems. Bennett knew Hamlisch because they worked together on the play Henry, Sweet Henry. He met Kleban through a mutual friend and decided to put the two of them together.

Their challenge was to showcase the abilities of dancers rather than singers. They listened to hours of the dancers’ stories on tape, searching for the anecdote or line that could evolve into a song. As Kleban once explained, “every twenty or twenty-five pages there would be something interesting to the outside, and not just to the chorus gypsy. Suddenly, you discovered something like the realization that ‘I can do that,’ that that young man could excel and have a special life if he danced. There was a song.”

“In the beginning, we all weren’t sure where we were going,” Hamlisch explains. “We had four hours worth of show and two songs. I remember Michael asking me what I thought and I told him I didn’t know, there was so much material. Michael had the vision, we followed him and it really shows you what a good collaboration is about. If you have enough people, going in the same boat, riding in the same stream, going the same way, then your chances are so much better. We were all following out captain.”

Bennett pushed for a score where the musical sequences moved laser-like from character to character. He and Kleban pressed Hamlisch to reach beyond his comfort zone, to make the music match the driving force and motion of the dancers. As Hamlisch explains, “We tried to make the music energetic, kind of angular and very rhythmic.” The result was a brassy backbeat score fused with Broadway ballads.

The show’s opening is iconic. A rehearsal piano picks up in middle of a musical bar, counting down the beat for the dancers who “hope they get it.” Musical interludes coax and punctuate the dancer’s monologues, solo songs and group numbers. Two tunes have become immensely popular outside the context of the show. “What I Did for Love,” a Pop favorite that Bennett reportedly almost cut, became the anointed anthem, and “One Singular Sensation,” a solo piano riff that builds with signature horns to the unforgettable high-kick finale.

Initially, critics expounded on Bennett’s dazzling production, its outstanding direction and choreography, and overlooked or discounted the score.

“The music by Marvin Hamlisch is occasionally hummable and often quite cleverly drops into a useful buzz of dramatic recitative,” Clive Barnes said in his review. Many critics called it merely “serviceable.” However, audiences responded to the music and for many, even today, it defines the American musical.

Theater aficionados regard Kleban’s lyrics as brilliant but underrated with clever phrases that have pervaded popular culture: “One singular sensation,” “Kiss today goodbye” and “Who am I anyway, am I my resumé?”

“I’d consider him the unsung hero of ‘Chorus Line,’” Hamlisch insists. “Ed shunned publicity. Because it was a concept musical, correctly, the director got most of the praise for the concept.”

In the three decades since A Chorus Line propelled the American musical to a new level, audiences have been inundated with public auditions and tell-alls. With television shows like So You Think You Can Dance and American Idol, the idea of putting it all on the line is no longer a novel one. With the endless reality shows, talk shows, and blogs, people over-share ad infinitum. Today’s theatergoers are certainly not shocked by confessional storylines, particularly those relating to 1975 social mores and cultural taboos.

Yet, A Chorus Line still resonates. Those dancers are not putting themselves out there for fame or fortune, they do it because they simply can’t not do it. And there’s the score. It has endured, infinitely recognizable and insistent that all you need is the music, the mirror and the chance to dance.

For the fast facts about A Chorus Line, click here.

Composer Marvin Hamlisch and lyricist Edward Kleban won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize and the 1976 Tony Award for Best Score for A Chorus Line.

Marvin Hamlisch is one of only two people in history (the other, Richard Rodgers) to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize. He presently holds the position of Principal Pops Conductor with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and is also the Pops Conductor for the National Symphony and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra.

Edward Kleban made his Broadway debut with A Chorus Line; his only Broadway musical hit show. He was an ardent advocate and a long-standing member of the Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) Musical Theatre Workshop. Kleban died of cancer in 1987. A Class Act, a musical based on his life and songs, was staged on Broadway by friends and colleagues in 2001 and received a Tony nomination.

Photo Credits: Paul Kolnik

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