musical theatre. Everything clicks into focus, the lyric is sud-
denly clear, the precision moves of the line are perfect. This is
what the show is about.^11
This achievement is undercut by a last-minute return to
sentimentality, when the chorus line goes into “internal-
thought” mode once more and sings “What I Did for Love” as
an anthem to the theatre. One of the dancers, Paul, has been
injured. His career is probably over. What will you do when
you can’t dance any more? asks the tiresome Zach, and the
chorus goes into internal thought mode and sings their hymn
about loving the theatre anyhow. Ken Mandelbaum reports
that the composer, Marvin Hamlisch, demanded a spot for
“What I Did for Love” on grounds that it would become a hit
tune about two lovers who are calling off an affair.^12 The lyrics
are so generalized and trite that they could refer to the ending
of anything lovable. (The song did become a hit outside of the
show, and the film version did turn it into a song about lovers.)
But this last-minute piece of pandering cannot drive away the
real climax, when “One” comes across as a dance number and
the chorus line, which is supposed to support a star, finds itself
in the limelight—it is the star.
Musically, “One” is brilliant as an ensemble dance number.
It is strung out along a series of chromatic harmonies that re-
fuse to deliver a conclusive cadence until the end of the thirty-
two-bar structure of the song. Look for a V–I cadence after the
lead-in and you will see the point at once. There is no B-flat
seventh leading to the tonic E-flat cadence until the chorus is
ending, then one comes along to conclude the climactic three
whole notes—the high pitches of the song, on “she’s the one”—
so that the kind of musical closure which normally concludes
each four or eight bar section of a tune is here deferred all the
way to the end. This stringing out of the song’s harmony opens
the space in which dance ensembles can do their work, “five,
118 CHAPTER FIVE
(^11) Unison dancing can be achieved at measure 241 in the vocal score, in
which case Zach interrupts it when he pulls Cassie out of the line at measure
- Or it can be achieved in the curtain call.
(^12) Mandelbaum, A Chorus Line and the Musicals of Michael Bennett, p. 185.