Baayork Lee, 63, who played Connie Wong in the original, is the living link between the show’s origins and today.
She is director and choreographer of a show that was based on the lives of its first cast members.
Adam Brown, 24, who grew up in Centerville, embodies the spirit of a show about distinct individuals yearning to submerge their uniqueness into an ensemble, or chorus.
As a swing and understudy for three roles, “I’m living the dream,” he said while anticipating a return visit to his hometown.
As much as any musical can be, “A Chorus Line” was a product of its time.
In 1975, when director Michael Bennett created it, Gerald Ford was in his post-Watergate presidency, Bill Gates founded Microsoft and NBC launched “Saturday Night Live.”
Even though its cast members need to sing and act as well as they move, it’s about dancers. The 1970s brought a dance boom in the United States. From the ballet studio to the Broadway stage, it was cool to be one.
“A Chorus Line” is about several of them, even a former star, striving and competing to win a part in a new Broadway musical. The setting is a bare stage in an empty theater, where hopefuls show what they can do and tell about themselves, sometimes quite revealingly. Running time is 120 minutes.
The show is officially “dedicated to anyone who has ever danced in a chorus or marched in step . . . anywhere.”
Lee, who was a child actor and original cast member of “The King and I” in 1951, said she “played myself” in “A Chorus Line.”
Others in that premiere company included Donna McKechnie as Cassie and Wayne Cilento as Mike.
Thommie Walsh, who has directed and choreographed at La Comedia Dinner Theatre, was the first Bobby, which is one of three roles Brown has learned so he can be ready to go on, if needed.
Dayton dancer Bruce Anthony Davis was one of the first replacement cast members in “A Chorus Line” as Richie, going on to perform in six more musicals on Broadway.
Along with the 2006 Broadway revival, the “Chorus Line” resurgence has been fueled by the 2009 documentary “Every Little Step,” about performers auditioning for the show’s return to New York.
Brown, 24, who attended Centerville High School, went straight to New York in 2004, attending the American Musical & Dramatic Academy.
He landed a role in the national tour of “The Producers,” then spent the past two years “pretty much waiting tables” until he was added for “A Chorus Line” a few months ago.
He is very much like many of the characters in the musical — in need of the job and looking for a break.
“The show has a new meaning now because so many people across the country are out of work and want a job,” he said.
When the tour ends in June, he will go back to auditioning and uncertainty. His goal is to be cast in a show on Broadway. A national tour is the next best thing.
While growing up, he studied at South Dayton Dance Theatre and the Lacon Center for Dance in Centerville, performed in musicals at Epiphany Lutheran Church and had featured roles in musicals produced by the Muse Machine.
Once the longest-running musical on Broadway, it has been surpassed by “The Phantom of the Opera,” which is returning to the Schuster Center in June, “Cats” and “Les Miserables.” To put that in perspective, “Wicked” is only 19th on the list.
Show has been a career for Lee
Baayork Lee, who went to New York’s High School for the Performing Arts with “A Chorus Line” creator Michael Bennett, has two major threads in her professional life.
One is “A Chorus Line,” for which she is the caretaker and promoter.
She has staged almost three dozen international productions of it, most recently in Milan, Italy, in Italian.
The next major one is coming up this summer in Korea, where she said there has only been one previous and unauthorized staging that was constructed from the movie. The 1985 film was directed by Richard Attenborough and featured Michael Douglas as the director, Zach.
Because there is no dance tradition in Korea to match the one depicted in the show, Lee said the first step is to put those cast through a month-long “Chorus Line boot camp,” including intensive daily ballet classes, to get them ready.
Her second recurring role these days is president of the New York-based National Asian Artists Project, which plans to produce classic musicals including “Oklahoma,” “Carousel,” “The King and I,” “Miss Saigon” and “Flower Drum Song” with Asian American casts.
She said the performers she sees in auditions for “A Chorus Line” today tend to be very well trained. The cast for the touring company “is one of the strongest, vocal wise, I’ve ever seen,” she said.
They also tend to be “bulkier, especially the men. Everyone goes to the gym now,” she said.
The show hasn’t exactly settled into quaint status. But it’s not the radical and revolutionary show it was in 1975.
“We were in the forefront of a lot of amazing things. To see a new generation play it and work together at being one is a personal thrill for me,” she said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2377 or tmorris@DaytonDailyNews.com.
How to Go
What: “A Chorus Line”
Where: Schuster Performing Arts Center, First and Main streets
When: April 27-May 2
Tickets: $35-$87
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