Discipline des corps féminins dans A Chorus Line (1975)

Abstract

After it first came to Broadway in 1975, A Chorus Line became a cultural phenomenon, whose success spanned fifteen years, and one of the most common examples of the then-recent subgenre of the concept musical that emerged towards the end of the 1960s. Michael Bennett’s choreography and direction moved A Chorus Line away from the classical integrated form, all the while maintaining the codes of the “backstage musical.” A Chorus Line stages the disciplinary processes and regulatory norms to which the dancers are submitted throughout the audition process. Distinguishing between female and male bodies might seem contradictory with the musical’s project, since the main goal of A Chorus Line’s narrative thread is to recruit a chorus that will perform as a unified ensemble, in which male and female dancers ultimately dissolve. However, the musical performs a certain number of disciplinary practices specific to female bodies: only female characters express a sense of inadaptation to the act of performing. The disciplinary process performed on the bodies often punishes the nonconform body, whereas the musical seems to celebrate the female body that resists essentialization and asserts its individuality. A Chorus Line’s twofold project, which both unleashes the dancers’ individualities and rigorously follows the discipline necessary to a chorus, offers a critical perspective on spectacle–but only to a certain extent: as much as it shows us the artificial nature of any performance, the play seems to produce an ideal “body-spectacle” that transcends gender norms but conforms to the normative process of spectacle.