'Every Little Step' Gets to Heart of 'A Chorus Line'

"God, I'm a dancer!/A dancer dances!" goes the memorable lyric from "A Chorus Line," the landmark Pulitzer Prize-winning musical. But as the filmmakers reveal in "Every Little Step," a thoroughly engrossing documentary about the origins and casting of the show's 2006 Broadway revival, a dancer also worries a lot and paces a lot and prays a lot and cries a lot.

The 90-minute movie, directed by James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo, cleverly and affectionately borrows from the musical's own plot to lay out for us in fascinating detail the painstaking, months-long audition process through which the revival's cast was built.

You may imagine, from the endless audition chronicles of "American Idol" and "America's Got Talent," that you've witnessed all the trying-out to which you'll ever need exposure. Yet there's a rawness and vitality to the hope and ambition depicted in "Every Little Step" that on "Idol" frequently comes across as ginned-up for the cameras. The film is an exemplary vehicle, too, for anyone seeking an understanding of how serious -- and serendipitous -- decisions about the casting of a big Broadway entertainment can be.

Stern and Del Deo appear to have been free to eavesdrop on many of the dramas that transpired in the Manhattan studios in which the revival's director, Bob Avian, and his team rendered verdicts. Avian was co-choreographer of the original 1975 production with its director, the late Michael Bennett; the movie includes film clips and recordings of the visionary Bennett discussing his concept for the show. That concept -- it grew out of an interview session he taped on Jan. 26, 1974, with 22 dancers whom he'd invited to gather and talk about their lives -- is as enshrined now in theatrical legend as the original production's remarkable 15-year Broadway run.

The profitable revival, by comparison, lasted a little less than two years on Broadway -- it was no more than a carbon copy of Bennett's handiwork. The film does, in fact, make clear how straitjacketed the production's casting team was, given that the dancers on the line are based on real people and their traits are so character-specific. Still, some of the documentary's best moments capture the expressions of Avian and his assistants as they are caught unawares by an unexpectedly powerful audition.

It's delightful to watch, for instance, how these grizzled theater veterans melt into inarticulate tears after a young dancer, Jason Tam, tries out for the role of Paul, delivering a long monologue about Paul's stunned parents finding him working as a drag queen. Tam's emotional rendition is indeed shattering, and it prompts the sort of reaction an actor dreams about. After Tam leaves, one of the men behind the table, still choked up, says, "Sign him up."

Donna McKechnie, "A Chorus Line's" original Cassie -- the oldest dancer, desperate for a comeback -- is interviewed extensively, as is the show's composer, Marvin Hamlisch. The composer recounts how early in the musical's life, Bennett was prevailed upon to alter the audition outcome for the character Cassie, and how that change markedly improved audiences' response.

Much of the movie, however, concentrates on the auditioning dancers themselves, who, like the characters they seek to play, really need this job. At the final callbacks, the cameras follow several dancer-actresses vying for the same roles. Their collective hunger is such that a moviegoer not only exults for the luckily cast but also grieves for the worthy cast-asides.

Every Little Step (90 minutes, at Landmark's Bethesda Row and E Street Cinema, Cinema Arts and Shirlington 7) is rated PG-13 for some strong language including sexual references.