As for the Topic of the Day... Sort of...
No one will ever dance like Gene Castle. No one will ever dance like Donna McKechnie. No one will ever dance like Wayne Cilento... No one will ever dance like (fill in the blank)... -It's just not physically possible. -This is particularly true of Donna McKechnie in regards to "Turkey Lurkey Time" and "Music and the Mirror". Those dances were choreographed for her, on her. Any time I had to play a rehearsal for a new "Cassie", I never envied the young women who had to re-create a set of steps and body vocabulary that were not made for them specifically. Yes, some very minor adjustments were made from time to time, but since they were part of the revival - a recreation - they had to do the steps. In a sense, it was a no-win situation. If the choreography had been changed and adapted to the new Cassie, the new dancer, then there would have most certainly been cries of "blasphemy" from the, for lack of a better word right now, traditionalists. But even when some of the new Cassie's nailed the choreography, it still never looked nor "felt" the same as it did when Donna McKechnie did it.
I guess I should point out that Michael Bennett did change things for certain dancers if he recognized that certain things just did not "fit"right. I know a few dancers from the last company of A Chorus Line that Mr. Bennett supervised, and they all mentioned that "Michael" had wanted to re-choreograph more than a couple of chunks of the show in order to customize it to the strengths of that company. Alas, since the choreography of A Chorus Line attained iconic status in a relatively short amount of time, he had to "re-stage" and "re-create" rather than "refresh".
*And since I've been fortunate to have worked alongside Baayork Lee and have a peek into her "bible", I've seen some of the other "options" that Michael Bennett came up with for not only "Music and the Mirror", but also "I Can Do That" (there are at least three "official" versions) and some of the ensemble sections in the Montages.
There are some wonderful dancers and choreographers out there right now. As to whether their work is making it to the Broadway stage, well... Yes, Broadway shows still have dancing, however, I don't think anyone is writing or producing a "Dance Show". Even when a new show features dance, it's all kept in balance with the other elements of acting and singing. -Or you get purely choreographic pieces like Contact and Movin' Out. -Heck, even Cats was basically a dance piece.
I loved the dancing in In the Heights. It was never really flashy or attention-getting, but it wasn't meant to function that way in the show. The Drowsy Chaperone had some wonderful choreographic moments, but did I leave the theatre thinking about the dancing? No. I left the theatre thinking what a great show I had just seen (in general).
In the world of ballet there seems to be an automatic given that the same choreography will look different from one ballerina to the next. Choreographers and the audience(!) know that no two dancers bodies are alike, so, of course, the resulting choreography will look different. Different arms, different legs, extensions, lifts, suppleness. Comparisons are inevitably made in regards to how the original ballerina danced the part, but there seems to be less of a sense of "the original was the right one".
