'Every Little Step': Film documents 2006 revival of 'A Chorus Line'

"One....singular sensation, every little step she takes...." Go on, just try to get that tune out of your head.

It's from "A Chorus Line," the Broadway musical that's been dazzling song-and-dance-loving audiences since 1975. And now, it's at the movies: "Every Little Step," a documentary about the show's recent Broadway revival, arrives at the Harvard Exit Friday.

Directors Adam Del Deo (in Seattle for an interview earlier this spring) and James D. Stern (joining us by telephone) received special permission from Actors' Equity to film the audition process for the show's 2006 revival. "A Chorus Line" is, of course, a musical about the audition process, in which a group of dancers stand on a line and are grilled, one by one, by an offstage voice who's trying to determine why they dance, and whether they're right for this show. So the film mirrors the show: We watch as thousands of dancers are winnowed down to a few dozen, and in the process we come to know them.

And the cameras find moments of drama that parallel the show itself: Jason Tam moving a tableful of directors to tears with his audition for the role of Paul (quite a feat, considering most of them have heard the monologue hundreds if not thousands of times); Nikki Snelson, at the final callbacks, eyeing a better competitor with both envy and good-sport resignation; Charlotte d'Amboise, a Broadway veteran who's never quite found stardom, finding parallels between her life and the role of Cassie.

Though the premise of "A Chorus Line" is that every dancer has a story, not every story made it into the movie. Watchers of "Every Little Step" may wonder why the key role of Diana Morales (who sings "What I Did For Love" and "Nothing" in the show) doesn't appear. "Natalie Cortez sewed that part up so early in the process, and she did not do it in a dramatic fashion," explained Stein. "It didn't give us as much to use." He noted that they had 400 or 500 hours of original footage, which needed to be reduced to approximately 90 minutes. Cortez, however, can be heard in the film, singing "What I Did For Love" over the end credits.

And other behind-the-scenes stories had to be left behind. Stern spoke of an extended section on the show's late creator, Michael Bennett, that existed in an earlier draft of the film. "I thought it was heartbreaking and incredible, but at the end of the day it was off premise. After all the work we did, all the times we looked at it, trying to get the balance right between the historical and the auditions, it just took the movie a little bit far afield and stopped it in its tracks." He hopes the material will appear on an eventual DVD.

Del Deo is sorry the final film won't include additional information about how the first "A Chorus Line" workshop came together, with Bennett creating hours of audiotapes through conversations with dancers (we hear a few of these, on crackling audio, in "Every Little Step") and winnowing it down for an eventual workshop — then a novelty for a would-be Broadway show. "It could have been its own documentary," he said.

"Every Little Step" made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, with a special guest present: Donna McKechnie, who played Cassie in the original "Chorus Line" and had been especially close to Bennett. She had, at first, been hesitant about being part of the documentary.

"I probably talked to Donna five times, begging her to do it, because she was Bennett's muse and the muse of the show itself," said Stern. "I was very worried that we wouldn't have a film without Donna. Her concern was that she wanted to honor Michael's memory and she didn't know what, at the end of the day, the film was going to be like. When we went to Toronto, we had not [yet] seen it in front of an audience. Donna came, and we had this incredible standing ovation that was about five minutes long, which was really one of the great moments of our lives. Afterward, she got on stage and said, 'Michael would love this movie.' "

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com