One Singular Sensation…

I’m just back from seeing A Chorus Line at the Centre in Vancouver. I loved it. I saw the movie years ago, long enough to have forgotten pretty much everything except the premise and the closing number, but I was looking forward to seeing it again. And now I remember why I liked it the first time around. I love some of the music in it, but mostly, it appeals to my writer soul. It deals with exactly the thing that interests me most as a writer and one I’ve mentioned here before: the story behind the persona. The dancers in the show each come with a personal history that makes them unique, even though they have to be identical when they are dancing, and the show explores that. The director wants to know what makes them who they are, even though he specifically says he doesn’t want any of them drawing his attention when they’re in the chorus line.

We were lucky to see one of those moments when something happens that isn’t in the script and the actor has to keep going and fix it. I enjoy those moments, the sense of connection they seem to create between character and audience. Tonight, one of the characters, Cassie, was in the middle of her long solo dance, alone onstage, when she fell hard on her butt and one of her dance shoes went flying way up over her head and landed somewhere offstage. In true professional style, she simply got up and danced the rest of her solo with one shoe on. The only indication that it may not have been part of the script (it wasn’t) was when the director told her to “pick up her shoe” and head down to the basement with the others to learn the song, and his acknowledgement of the loss of her shoe made her smile. But even so, it wasn’t obvious that it was an error. She literally fell on her butt alone onstage, but because she kept dancing, kept smiling, and never let on, most of the audience didn’t have a clue she wasn’t supposed to do that.

So now I’m going to bed with “What I did for love” and “One” running through my head. Not a bad way to end the night.