What They Do for Love

America just seems consumed these days with bad dancing on TV for reasons that escape (and, truth be told) annoy me.

   But good dancing, impassioned dancing, dancing only the young can do — daring, energetic, enthusiastic, breathless ­ — is the core of “Every Little Step,â€� the mesmerizing, entertaining, haunting documentary film based on the making of  Michael Bennett’s original “A Chorus Lineâ€� and its 2006 revival on Broadway.

   Every theater fan and lots of tourists to New York City between 1975 and 1990 know that “A Chorus Lineâ€� was Broadway’s longest running show (15 years). And that was because it told the true, often funny, often heart-wrenching story of 17 musical theater gypsies — the boys and girls who dance and sing behind the stars and principals — in incisive monologues and songs and dances.

   (Was Marvin Hamlisch ever again so good?)

   But not so many know that “A Chorus Lineâ€� was conceived in a midnight-to-dawn, tape-recorded session between Bennett and 17 real-life gypsies.  The show gestated over a couple of years of  workshop readings and performances. And it was finally born to rave reviews, nine Tony awards and the Pulitzer for drama.

   Filmmakers Adam Del Deo and James D. Stern were given total access to the original Bennett-gypsy tapes and interviews and footage through the gestational period of the show.  For the revival, Bob Avian, Bennett’s partner in the original production, allowed the film crew to record the fascinating audition process that winnowed 3,000 dancer/singers to the final cast of 17 plus understudies.

   This, of course, is a play within a play: actors competing to be in a musical about actors competing to be in a musical.

   Hopes are high, fear of failure constant, emotions ready to burst out in real life as well as on stage.  And the finalists are all so good you want each to win.  From Charlotte d’Amboise, daughter of famous ballet star Jacques, to all the unknowns, every auditioner has a story, sometimes the same as a story in the play.  They make us laugh, and they make us cry: when the final winner gives us all of Paul, the gay boy’s,  monologue, I cried along with most of the selection panel in the film.  He is better than the original Paul — or so I think.

   This is a powerful story of dreams come true and dashed,  careers launched and still waiting, and of the resilience of youth to try and try again. Theater is a wondrous thing, and these young people are determined to be part of it despite the pain, the uncertainty, the  frequent disappointment.  Someday each will say this is “What I Did for Love.â€�

“Every Little Step� is available from Netflix and some local libraries.