You know that dream where you have a final for a class you've never attended? Or you're about to go on stage for a role you never learned the lines to? Or you have a paper due that you totally forgot about? I lived a version of that nightmare when I auditioned for A Chorus Line (I also lived the "I have a final paper due next period that I totally forgot about, and this period I have to direct my live-to-tape 3-camera sitcom final and have to write the other class's final paper while directing this sitcom" one, but that's a different story). Apparently, every musical theatre dancer in the city knows the famous combination from A Chorus Line. The creative team took it as a given that every girl in the room knew it before we walked in, so they didn't teach it. Being the sole dancer in the room who knew nothing more of it than the "how many jazz hands can we work into a single bar" opening, and of course being auditioner #3 (which means I went in the first group of four), I wound up getting a wonderful opportunity to showcase my improvisation skills. Unfortunately, I don't think the creative team was looking for improv skills....
A Chorus Line seems to be to every generation of theatre dancers what Center Stage is to my generation of bunheads: that movie you watched at sleepovers, learning all the choreography from, learning every line by heart, wishing you were in it. But I've always been that odd dancer who finds the show to be far more disturbing and depressing than the inspirational and touching story most of my theatre friends find it to be. (Then again, I would imagine non-ballet-dancers probably don't watch Center Stage and think "gee, that movie where the girl was throwing up after eating her pizza and there was a lot of workplace sexual harassment totally made me want to be a ballet dancer"… but what can I say, that film's gold to me.) Sitting through A Chorus Line once was plenty for me. That scene at the end where they've all been lobotomized into "one singular sensation" and have ghoulish grins on their faces -- though I'm not an expert on the show, I think that was actually the point of the ending, whereas most productions of the show treat the finale as a celebration. To me, the resonating message of A Chorus Line is that as dancers, we so desperately need to do what we love that we will squash our individuality into conformity in order to do it. And that, to me, is sad. Because it's true.
Though I've had plenty of amazing musical theatre auditions where we did get to act out characters through our dance (the joy of getting a golden ticket to the ball in Cinderella, the discovery, love, and ultimate loss of a relationship in an audition for Christopher Gattelli's In Your Arms, the flirty toughness of a Philadelphia bar girl in Rocky), I've also had lots of musical theatre auditions in which we're asked to do that ghoulish grin that has nothing to do with the choreography, while the choreographer spends more time reading our resumes than watching us as we perform in groups of four. And I would take those jobs in a heartbeat, too, and genuinely love every second I was on stage, because I love to dance, and I love to perform, and I need to do both as desperately as I need to breathe. But what I would love even more is to be an individual on stage -- someone who has a story and a character, even if the audience never gets to know it. And too frequently, as dancers, we're just the glittery smiling kickline.
Then this summer I discovered the world of music videos, where at the audition we get to dance one at a time in front of the camera and the director and show off what we do best, where the director never even glances at our resumes during the auditions, where we get to freestyle at the shoot, where the choreographer actually reads the "special skills" section, and something from that winds up in the video (hello 230° splits).... A world where I booked a job auditioning with a pink streak in my hair. A world where "Pop your head, Cassie" is the best advice to follow to book the job.* And a world where showing how I'm different from everyone else in that room results in somebody paying me to do what I love. And so I love music videos.
And this is my favorite music video of the year. I was fortunate enough to dance in a video earlier this year by the same director, Emil Nava. I love his work, and I so wish I were in this gorgeous video. And I love that dance seems to be making a bit of a comeback in music videos lately.
* For those of you not familiar with this soul-crushing show, when former leading lady Cassie auditions to be part of the ensemble, the director beats her style into conformity with one of the most famous lines of the show, "Don't pop your head, Cassie." Dance teachers everywhere say this in class and rehearsal to mean "fit in; match every one else; be uniform." When attempting to find a clip of that line to link to here, I found this one instead. It's a more interesting interpretation of the line anyway....
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