This film about Broadway opens with auditions, where the dance captain is a drill sergeant and the
chorines are uber-disciplined grunts firing off a battery of moves.
These
chorines of technological determinism, personal anarchy, and the technological sublime pile out of business class and onto the jetway to tell us what we want and believe.
That old Dixieland floor-stomper, "Tiger Rag," opens the show with a joyful blast, as the Atta-Girls, a line of
chorines in barely there tiger costumes (by the inimitable William Ivey Long), strut their stuff at Nick's Club.
(28) The model's walk down the couture house stairway onto a raised catwalk migrated to the Broadway stage in the form of Wayburn's "processional," a choreographed sequence featuring the model-showgirls (or, using Wayburn's lexicon, the "'A'
chorines").
From the opening scene of these "young at heart"
chorines rehearsing at the new Cotton Club, it is clear that the film is crafted with an infectious affection.
The dancing chorus of scantily clad
chorines, the twenty-horse ballet, the elephants, and Jocko the juggling crow were all in attendance.
Michelle Williams portrayed the actress luminously (and Academy Award-nominatedly) in the 2011 biographical film My Week With Marilyn; rival Broadway
chorines fought to play her last spring on NBC's television series Smash; and, as always, more and yet more new books continue to be published, both fictional and factual (with much blurring of that divide).
Although White indulged in homosexuality, teenaged actresses and
chorines were the fire of his loins.
With a story set in the "Mad Men" '60s, Long dresses his bouquet of long-stemmed
chorines in shirts-only Yankees pinstripes, robin egg blue stewardess uniforms, skinny white capri pants and halter tops, and shirt-waist black dinner jackets for a show that unabashedly reaches out to the elusive Tired Businessman, that long-forgotten prey of Broadway producers with names like Ziegfeld.
A little boy conducts the band and then tap dances with nearly white
chorines. Jeff comes in with Undine, who cattily remarks of her rival, "I've known Belle since before she straightened her hair." After asking if Belle's boyfriend is still in jail, she attacks Belle, resulting in a classic "catfight" on the dance floor.
In the catalytic reaction the solvent serves as the hydrogen source in removal of
chorines and hydrogenation of a double bond between aliphatic carbons.
With a few glancing nods to European-style modernism, the classic avant-garde, alternative-theatre forms and iconic personalities outside the black-theatre/white-theatre political continuum, The American Stage ultimately reflects a rasping love for glitz, glamour, faded stars, leggy
chorines, melodrama, gold dust and sequins--the stuff nostalgia is made of.