A Chorus Line No. 7 - Baayork Lee
- Lauryn Johnson
- Jul 5
- 4 min read
"I got a call from Michael and he said, 'Baayork, I'm doing this show and you must come down and you're going to have to sing.'
"I'd always wanted to be an opera singer," Lee said, "but faced with an audition, I suddenly became paranoid. In those days, of course, the chorus dancers danced, singers sang, and actors acted. Triple threats were not a necessity yet. So I had only one song, 'I Enjoy Being a Girl', Pat Suzuki's number from Flower Drum Song.
"But it wasn't right for what Michael wanted. He wanted me to sing 'Put On a Happy Face'. I bought the sheet music but had no one to play the accompaniment. So, I called Michael and told him I wasn't coming. He assured me everything was going to be okay, so I found myself down at the Shakespeare Festival with a room full of people. And there was Marvin Hamlisch playing the piano.
"So I tried to 'Put On a Happy Face' but I forgot the words. I fell all over Marvin trying to read the lyrics over his shoulder. I'd forgotten the words. I came totally unprepared. I wasn't special, I wasn't perfect. I'd disappointed Michael and embarrassed myself. I left humiliated. That evening I called Michael and cried 'I can't sing! I can't sing!'
"He said, 'Baayork, stop worrying about it. If you're not in the show, you're going to assist me.' That was wonderful. I knew I would be involved. I was going to be working with Michael again. That's all that mattered to me." Lee had skipped the tape sessions but Bennett and Dante clearly felt she had an interesting story to tell, being an Asian dancer and thriving in an industry where shows like Flower Drum Song and The King and I are a rarity.
"Lee was working in that spring's 'Milliken Breakfast Show,' and remembers, "Michael came to a rehearsal at City Center on Fifty-fifth Street and said, 'Come to my apartment. Were going to talk on some tapes.'
"'Oh no!' I thought. What am I going to say?' Well, Michael got me started in spite of the fact that April Nevins [a dancer] and Jeff Hamlin [who later became production stage manager for A Chorus Line] were there. Michael was so relaxed and coaxing. It's okay, Baayork, just talk? I found myself talking about my childhood and how I wanted to grow up to be a prima ballerina. The conversation was flowing now. Then, out pops my big secret: I always wanted to be an opera singer. Everybody was shocked. It wasn't like what Thommie Walsh and Sammy Williams had told me on the phone, where they sat around all night dragging out the dregs of their lives. I went in and it was painless, absolutely painless, because I was with Michael and I trusted him."
"Aside from being hired to play a character based on herself, Lee was hired as dance captain of A Chorus Line, a job that called upon her to assist Bennett by memorizing his choreography and making sure all the dancers learned it and executed it properly. As co-choreographer Bennett turned to Bob Avian, another fellow dancer from his earliest days in the theater."
—On the Line: The Creation of A Chorus Line by Robert Vargas, Baayork Lee, & Thommie Walsh
"In the first workshop I was the assistant and I played myself," Lee continued. "I did all the things an assistant would. I'd give a warmup before rehearsals. At that point there was no one playing the director in the show. We would speak to a void at the back of the audience. I would say, 'Zach, do you want the kids in now?' — stuff like that. And then I would wait a few beats, shake my head, and say, 'Okay, I'll get them.' Obviously that concept didn't work. I had a few other lines. Mostly my job was to learn the dances as fast as I could and help people when they had difficulties. I felt that my being in the show, being on that line, was totally secondary.
"I didn't feel as though I was management because Michael was there. I had watched him all these years create from nothing. Once again he was doing it. I was a soldier in his army, and I gave him my all. He didn't know what he was creating, and we didn't know either. I was one of the lucky ones because, as an assistant, I was able to sit next to him and listen to him express his inner thoughts. So I understood his point of view and why he did certain things.
"Michael talked to me a lot about respect for dancers, the dignity of dancers. I never even knew the word, couldn't even spell it. And there was Michael Bennett, feeding nineteen people and making them sing, dance, and act: You can sing. Give him another note. It's too high but he's going to do it because I want him to do it. You can't do that step? Put your foot lower. That doesn't sound right? It doesn't sound natural? Change it. What do you feel like saying . . . ?'
—On the Line: The Creation of A Chorus Line by Robert Vargas, Baayork Lee, & Thommie Walsh
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