PAGE 6
THE TWIG
OCTOBER 29, 1980
One singular sensation! ‘A Chorus Line’
by Ann Stringfield
Wednesday, October 22,
Stewart Theatre presented the
New York Shakespeare
production of Michael Ben
nett’s “A Chorus Line” at the
Raleigh Memorial
Aduitorium.
“A Chorus Line” is the
story of an audition for a
musical. It is the story of the
theatre and the people whose
lives are forever a part of it.
The director of the
audition wants to know more
about the auditioning dancers.
He wants insight into how and
why they are there. The
dancers, then, are auditioning
their lives. The story is the
unfolding of their hopes, their
dreams and their despair.
“A Chorus Line” opens
with an electrifying number,
“I Hope I Get It.” There is a
thrill when the music swells
and thirty dancers move
downstage with force.
precision and an un
fathomable energy. “Step,
Kick, Kick...turn, turn, out,
in...back step, pivot step...-
walk, walk, walk” ~ all with
unbelievable speed and
fluidity.
The interspersing of
music, dance and plot is
brillant. The entire musical is,
indeed, a continuum. The
most successful blend of
dance and dialogue is “Hello
Twelve, Hello Thirteen,” a
song about adolescence.
The choreography of “The
Music and The Mirror”;
however, is rather disap
pointing. Cassie’s dance lacks
the movement and defined
space of the other numbers.
Michael Bennett’s
choreography is at its best,
though, in the finale, “One.”
“One” is worth its weight in
glitter and gold. Every
movement is as precise and
synchronized as a fine quartz
watch.
“A Chorus Line” is a
comic, poignant and very,
very real. It is a story about
all of us. We are Maggie, who
dances around the living
room, and Paul, who struggles
with manhood, and Cassie,
who only asks to be given a
chance.
“Kiss today good-bye and
point me toward tomorrow
....” There’s always the hope
of tomorrow for all of us in the
chorus line.
Campaigning and the presidency
(Continued from Page 2)
presidential office (and the
future president) from
dangers that were thought to
arise from direct appeals to
the voters by ambitions and
contending candidates. In
particular, these were three
features of the Presidency
that were thought to be
threatened by direct cam
paigning: its Constitutional
authority, its receptivity to
genuine statesmanship, and
its accountability to the
people.
The Presidency was
designed to be an office whose
authority stemmed from
powers Ranted by the Con
stitution and from the
President’s place in the tri
partite Constitutional design.
But the Constitution itself
rested upon the authority of
“We, the people.” By directly
campaigning before the
voters, a President might
plausibly claim to embody the
will of the people since their
vote could be taken to be an
endorsement of his personal
appeal. Neither the justices of
the Supreme Court nor
members of Congress could
make a similar claim. Hence
a President might attach the
authority of “we, the people”
to himself at the expense of
the other branches of
government and, indeed, of
the Constitution itself. His
power would rest on his
relationship with the people,
not his Constitutional position,
and he might use that
authority to usurp powers
properly belonging elsewhere
or nowhere. Nixon’s claim to
have received a “mandate” in
the 1972 election to which
Congress ought to bow in
illustrative of the danger
feared. “Front porch”
campaigns would help to
make victories party as well
as personal victories, thus
diminishing the President’s
claim while increasing the
claims of the party in
Congress.
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Secondly, the Presidency
ought to attract and give
scope to genuine statesmen.
But direct campaigning would
give' the advantage to can
didates who were
preeminently orators and
rhetoricians-men who could
appear to understand politics
without really doing so. These
orators might easily become
the slaves as well as the
manipulators of people’s
passions and moods. In
stability would be introduced
into Presidential programs as
Presidents scurried to play to
the changing moods of the
people, and fie discretion and
flexibility essential to the
conduct of the Presidency
would be diminished.
The “front porch”
campaign sought to insert
a party organization between
the candidate and the people
which would shield the future
President from excessive
dependence on transient
moods. The enthusiasm and
diligence with which he was
supported would depend to a
large extent on his serving the
stable principles and interests
of an organized party rather
than the shifting sentiments of
an inchoate mass. Oratory
would take second place to
substantive political goals and
be contained by a candidate’s
ability to serve concrete in
terests.
Finally, it was thought
that the President should be
accountable to the people. But
this did not mean accountable
to people’s whims, for the
people themselves would be
likely to repent of their whims
within a short time. Rather it
meant accountability to the
more stable and better con
sidered opinions of the voters-
to what the Federalist called
“the cool and deliberate sense
of the community.” But in a
campaign of direct personal
appeals, free of the discipline
of having to govern, can
didates would be likely to
compete with each other to
exploit the latest mood
passing through the public.
The “cool and deliberate
sense of the community”
would not rule in such an
election, but victory would go
to those who most skillfully
gave expression to transient
opinion. The role given to
parties in the “front porch”
campaign would help to inject
stability into public opinion
and curb the bobbing and
weaving of candidates.
When William Jennings
Bryan campaigned in 1896, he
was widely condemned as a
demagogue for his courting of
the people. But Woodrow
Wilson articulated a new view
of the Presidency that has
made stumping the country
for votes a respectable ac
tivity ever since. This new
Presidency, in Wilson’s view,
would derive its authority, not
primarily from the Con
stitution, but from its ex
pression of the will of the
people. True statesmanship
would come not from a
President using his Con
stitutional prerogatives
wisely, but from a President
who could articulate the deep-
felt desires of the people and
marshall them to compel
Congress and Party to accede
to his program. The President
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would be the “voice of the
people.” and elections would
be, not so much occasions to
hold Presidents and would-be
Presidents to account, as
occasions for the skillful
orator to arouse the public by
tapping its feelings and ar
ticulating its wishes. Thus all
the power that could be
generated by a modern
democracy would be focused
in the hands of the President
for the good of all. Wilson’s
Presidency (which is now
ours) requires an election in
which the personal campaign
of the candidate is central in
order to establish the
President’s personal
authority, arouse the force of
the people, and concentrate
this force in one man.
Whatever the merits of
Wilson’s view, more striking
today, are its failings.
Presidents who rely on the
power of their oratory alone
rather than their Con
stitutional authority and their
strategic position within the
Constitutional structure seem
weak, not strong. Leadership
seems too often to have
transformed itself into
“followership” of shallow
moods and sentiments. And
the people’s opinions seem
inchoate and unable to direct
the government or to call a
President to account even as
Presidents disregard Con
stitutional boundaries. We
have the personal campaigns
favored by Wilson without the
fruits he thought would come
from them. We need to
reconsider not merely the
campaign practices but the
view of the Presidency of
which they are part and
parcel.
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