Dance of Life

By T.E. Kalem

A CHORUS LINE

Conceived, choreographed and directed by MICHAEL BENNETT Music by MARVIN HAMLISCH Lyrics by EDWARD KLEBAN

In the American musical, dance has sketched a profile of the U.S., both geographically and psychologically. There has been the rustic rondelay, a handholding, earth-stamping ritual testifying to the vernal purity of the prairie. There has been the subway serenade--urban jostle, excitement and speed. Always there has been the brassy audacity of a nation that flung railroads like dice across the breadth of a vast continent.

And the solitary tremolo has also been heard, the soft-shoe shuffle, the wistful Tom Sawyerish scuffing of the stage boards that says Americans experience an isolating loneliness as if by the provenance of birth.

In A Chorus Line, Michael Bennett, who may be a direct descendant of Terpsichore, has added to the dance vocabulary of the U.S. musical. He has made dance a central theme as well as a supremely exhilarating act. The chorus line is his symbol of mass anonymity: It is also his symbol of teamwork, with the emphasis equally distributed between team and work. Bennett distills one more element. Behind the faceless mass, there is a face; behind the dazzling precision of the dance, there is a terrifying vulnerability, not the false step of a foot but the crippling fall of a psyche. In a chorus line each body is more or less equal in the eyes of the beholder, but each spirit is separate--an individual with hopes, fears and desires.

The structure of the show is that of the audition, the Spanish Inquisition of the theater. Unseen, speaking with the muffled voice of Kafka's God, the casting director asks each of the potential finalists for an accounting of his life and his love for dance and the theater. These accounts are just as mawkish, banal, self-absorbed and dream-bent as would be those of any of the playgoers. They are redeemed by humor and honesty.

Of these confessions, Sammy Williams' is the most affecting; he plays a boy who was first called "my son" by his father after the old man caught his act as a drag queen. As anyone who saw Follies could guess, a Michael Ben nett dance takes the parade-ground drill of the Radio City Rockettes and raises it to a Platonic ideal. As a dancer-cumactress, Donna McKechnie is an un crowned star. But just to indicate the medals that the entire cast has earned, they have collectively appeared in 88 different productions, in which they have given a total of 37,095 performances. If they were polled, they might vote A Chorus Line as their finest two hours.

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