GYPSY OF THE MONTH: Michelle Aravena of 'A Chorus Line'

When Michelle Aravena first auditioned for the new Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, she was working as a nanny and had been employed as a dancer during three of the previous fourteen months.
I really need this job. Please God, I need this job.

She spent six hours at the audition but, despite copious practice, fumbled the ballet combination and was cut before being allowed to sing.
I really blew it. How could I do a thing like that?

A couple of months later, she went back to an open call. She got through the ballet combination and the vocal audition, then was noncommittally thanked and sent home.
I've come this far but even so, it could be yes, it could be no.

She figured she was being dismissed politely. But the next day, she found out that she would be making her Broadway debut in A Chorus Line and would understudy the role of Diana Morales.

Which really was the plan all along. "When I heard they were bringing the show back, something in my body went 'That's going to be my Broadway debut,'" recalls Aravena, 28, a veteran of the Mamma Mia! and Les Misérables tours. "I've been doing this for a long time, and I've had a great career—principal work, understudy work, going from dancer to singer—but I didn't have my Broadway show. We used to have this joke in the company that I was working with at the time [that the revival was announced]: 'What are you going to do after this?' 'I'm going to take a break, because I've got to get ready for A Chorus Line.' 'Really?' 'No, I haven't even auditioned yet.'"

Such overconfidence is atypical for Aravena, she's quick to point out, but this was A Chorus Line, the Michael Bennett masterstroke that made gypsies the stars. A Chorus Line, a movie (!) she watched a gajillion times as a child. A Chorus Line, whose anthem is sung by a Hispanic girl.

So, last October, when they started seeing Hispanic performers, Aravena's agent got her into the audition. "Ballet isn't my strong point," Aravena admits, echoing something Connie—another role she understudies—says in Chorus Line about tap. But when she was cut after the ballet tryout, "I was so devastated because I knew that if I could just sing a bit for them it would improve my chances. I left the room in shock."

She begged the casting director for another chance. She hounded her agent to urge them to reconsider. But her only recourse was to wait a couple of months for the open call. Her agent didn't want her to go, fearing it would burn bridges when they had already rebuffed his entreaties on her behalf. She wouldn't let it go, however. "I have learned to listen to my gut over the years," she says. "Something inside me said 'Don't you dare give up.' I wanted to know I did everything I could to be in this show."

Aravena aced the open call, but now has to replay the audition nightmare at every Chorus Line performance. Her regular role is Tricia, one of the dancers cut at the end of the opening number. "It's a punch in the gut every single night having to play being cut," she says. "It's such an honest feeling to connect to for us that it hurts every single night."

Because Michael Bennett wanted to keep things as realistic as possible, the performers who play the cut dancers don't take a curtain call. You do hear from them after the opening number, though. They sing backup from the wings throughout the show—and are usually, almost involuntarily doing the choreography right along with those on stage, Aravena reveals.

In addition to Diana and Connie, Aravena understudies Bebe and Maggie. She went on as Bebe four times during Chorus Line's pre-Broadway engagement in San Francisco but is still awaiting her turn as Diana, a role she's loved since she was a child. She did get to play her other dream role, Anita in West Side Story, last year at Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. "Aravena finds the passion and cynicism of this fiery, worldly wise young woman," the Philadelphia Inquirer raved, adding that her "America" was "particularly lively and entertaining."

To convey how much it meant to her to portray Anita, Aravena relates: "I'm very much the true gypsy type, just constantly going from one place to the next. I don't have a family to worry about, I don't have a mortgage, so I don't have to stay in a job for the money. 'I've done this…let's move on.' But Anita—I would have signed a five-year contract for the role."

A 2000 production of West Side Story, in which she was in the ensemble, was also memorable. It was performed at La Scala, the first time the venerable Milan opera house ever presented a musical by an American company. Years earlier she had done the show in summer stock in Albany, N.Y., playing Anybodys when she was just 14.

Another show she first did as a child and has returned to again and again over the years is Evita, at about half a dozen regional theaters from Pennsylvania to South Carolina. "I started in the kids chorus and moved into kids chorus/ensemble, then I moved into kids chorus/dance ensemble, then finally made it to [the role of] Mistress—and still had to do the kids chorus."

She played Peron's mistress at Bridgeport's Downtown Cabaret Theatre, one of several theaters within commuting distance of the Connecticut town where she grew up, Bethel (outside Danbury); others included Candlewood Playhouse, Brookfield Playhouse and Darien Dinner Theatre. She worked at them throughout her childhood and was eligible for Equity by age 16.

Aravena, whose father is Chilean and mother is Italian-American, got started as a performer with tumbling, which her mother taught. "That led to dance classes, which led to community theater, which led to voice lessons…," she says, recounting how her career fell into place. "I never really have a memory of me going 'This is what I want to do.' It's just always been what I've done." Early on, she always had her sister, Nicole, at her side—taking the same classes, performing in the same shows. Nicole, who's two years younger, left for New York first, to enroll in the School of Performing Arts. Michelle stayed in Bethel and attended high school there, but she too moved to New York before she was out of her teens. "We lived together…like, lived together, shared one bed in my manager's spare bedroom," Aravena says.

Before long Nicole decided she'd rather teach than perform, and today she co-owns (with their mother) two Seven Star Schools of Performing Arts, one in Danbury and one in Brewster, N.Y. "It was really nice for her to find her niche in the same business yet on completely different sides of it," Aravena says proudly.

Michelle, meanwhile, now has her own apartment in Washington Heights that she has to share only with her two Boston terriers, Athena and Bella. She's lived and worked mostly on the road, though. (Chorus Line is her first New York show since the Debby Boone-starring Sound of Music at Lincoln Center when she was 11.) Her first job after graduating from high school was at Disney World, where she performed as Ariel in Disney-MGM Studios' Little Mermaid show for a year. She's also appeared at Actors Theater of Louisville, in The Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan (as Tiger Lily). Later, she was in the original U.S. production of Mamma Mia!—a pre-Broadway tour that started in Los Angeles. After four months in the ensemble, she moved into the role of Sophie when Tina Maddigan, who'd been playing the part on the tour, was selected to be Broadway's Sophie.

After Aravena had played Sophie for about a year and a half, her agent felt she should go out only for principal roles. "So I was auditioning a lot for major, major things [including the title role in Thoroughly Modern Millie]. It was pretty mind-blowing, having always worked in the dance ensemble, and I was a little freaked-out." She accepted an ensemble spot in the Les Misérables tour but didn't consider it a step down. "Everybody couldn't understand why I had left Mamma Mia! and was now doing an ensemble role in Les Miz," she says. "And I couldn't understand why it would even be a question. First of all, for a dancer to be in Les Miz—huge. To do Les Miz period—that's like classic, we grew up on it. It's a great show to do, and you do so much in the ensemble." She also understudied Fantine.

Though this is the first production of A Chorus Line that Aravena's been in, the musical has been part of her life for nearly her entire life. "The first ballad I learned was 'What I Did for Love.' My first song and dance number for competitions was 'The Music and the Mirror.' The material was a part of me at a very young age, even before I knew how good it was." That may have been because her early exposure was to the misbegotten film version. "I grew up [lowers voice as if to whisper] watching the movie," Aravena says, embarrassed. "When I was like 6, 7, 8, I watched it constantly. I remember being very excited that you could sing and dance at the same time; it was like the best thing that ever happened. All the bad choreography that happened in that movie, I knew it to a T."

She was such a devotee of the film, she couldn't quite appreciate it on stage when her parents took her to see it during its original Broadway run, when she was about 9. "It was such a shock to the system," she says, even more embarrassed. "I remember sitting there and going: [sigh] Why doesn't Bebe have the green two-piece on? Why isn't Richie tall and skinny? I was like, 'It's all different! It's all different!' I was really upset. I walked out going: [panting] 'What'd they do? They've ruined it!'"

She did, of course, wise up to the movie's inferiority. And over time, as she has weathered professional ups and downs, she recognized the profound truth in Diana's words. "Nobody would put themselves through this—we're not doing this for the money, we're not doing this for the glam—it's all for love," Aravena states. "It should be. There's no other way to do it. The things that I have gone through in my life, the things that I have battled, the tears, it's all worth it. In the end, every time you step on the stage it's your choice. Not everyone is blessed to make a living doing something that was their choice, a passion of theirs since they were a child."

Photos of Michelle, from top: on the Line; as Anita (left) in West Side Story; with Ryan Silverman in Mamma Mia!; on Broadway at last!