God I hope I Get What I Did for Love

“God I hope I get it.” The lyrics to the opening in the infamous “A Chorus Line”. I got the pleasure of watching my dear friend perform in this show last week. He was absolutely stunning. This is a friend who has been inspiring me with his dance since I was young and it was so cool to see him take the stage again. The show, however, hit me in a totally new light. It was kind of surreal. I have seen the show before and have known the show from a young age. But this time was different. It occurred to me that this show has formed our culture. It has contributed to the energy surrounding auditions. And for many people- especially young people- it has informed and defined what auditioning in New York and in general must be like. A severe knife cutting through the air. Everyone sizing each other up. “God I hope I get it. I hope I get it. How many people does he need…. Look at all the people. At all the people.”
And this isn’t untrue. This definitely is present. But more often than not I look around the room and with me I see a bunch of humans. (Sometimes I am convinced they are robots. But usually they are just people. Nervous, unsure, passionate, driven people). Seeing this show before my eyes did two things. It inspired me and added fuel to my fire. The dancing in this show is iconic. It is a language of its own. To anyone in theatre it says ‘We are unapologetically here. We have something to say. And we mean it.’ But it can’t even truly be put into words because it is a movement language. Not a words language. So it also could mean an infinite number of other things to other people. That is the beautiful thing. The movement speaks to a part of us deeper and truer than words can describe.
The other thing seeing this show did was remind me how a misdirected mindset, aka bullshit, can really take us all on a dark disheartening path whilst in the pursuit of our dreams. Sometimes, we have to be killers. We have to fight for what we want. We have to attack without hesitation, without mercy. Sometimes we have to be aggressive. But when our aggression is directed to the other actors in the room- a screw is loose. When we go into the audition room with the sense of fighting for our life, when we are desperate, not only does that totally take us off the path of art and creation, but the auditors can smell it a mile away and it is exhausting for them. Fight if your character needs to fight. Be relentless with this. But do not fight for yourself and do not fight for your life. That is not what you are in there to do. You are in there to tell a story. To serve the story and serve your audience- even if that audience is one person behind a desk. Audience size is completely irrelevant and unrelated to the importance of the story being told. The story being told is always and must always be the most important. This mindset is easier said than done. Why do you think I’m writing about it? It’s freaking hard. As I sat in the audience and watched this play in front of me- it became so clear to me. This is not what we should be doing. -This is not the way we should be doing it. And this is not the way many many people go about it. Another way is possible.
There is a line in the show that hadn’t resonated with me before. We are “borrowing the gift.” This blew my mind. In the show this comes about because the dancers are asked what they would do if they couldn’t dance anymore. One dancer comes to the conclusion that they are borrowing the gift. The ability to dance is fleeting. This leads to the devastating realization that life feels meaningless for many of them without dance. But “borrowing the gift” gave me new life on this day. It made me realize: every time we tell a story we are ‘borrowing’ a gift. A communal human gift of story-telling. It is a gift that belongs to all of us- but is owned by no one. And it doesn’t matter how old we get or how stiff our bodies become. This gift of storytelling will always be there for us to share and to take part in. -Even through movement. There is a woman at Steps on Broadway (The dance studio I study at in NYC) who takes class in a wheelchair. I’ve had the pleasure of dancing ballet and modern with her. And she is stunning. It is beautiful and awe-inspiring to watch. Her storytelling through movement is as clear as if she was standing on her legs.
One of the last songs in the show is “What I did for love.” I remember listening to this song several years ago feeling heartbroken. I was terrified for some time that I would never dance again the way I wanted to. -I had gone through two hip surgeries and something was still wrong. I needed a third. I connected at that time to the dancers in the show, feeling like my identity and whole self would be lost if my dancing was lost. The song carried sadness in it. I could feel the pain of ‘sacrificing’ so much to dance to then struggle and to then potentially ‘fail’. I do realize that we will always make sacrifices for our art. We will always make sacrifices no matter what we choose to do with our lives. Choosing one thing means sacrificing another. But when the thing you’re choosing is fighting for your livelihood over serving a greater story- you also sacrifice a great opportunity to spread love- deeper into you’re own heart and into others. The thing I realized this time around is that you will always “get” what you did for love. What you did for love will never be in vain. Love’s impact is infinite and keeps going forever. So do this art for love. Do it because our humanity needs it and needs stories.

I went to an awesome audition today and then went to tap class at Steps. When I was leaving Steps to head back downtown I saw this on the sidewalk. This person writes loving messages like these all over the city. I think this one was for me. Thank you street poet.

Thank you to Matt Wolf (IWU class of ’94) for inspiring in me that it is possible to adjust my mindset away from fighting for my life towards telling a story.