Nicholas Dante

American playwright and dancer

• Born: November 22, 1941
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: May 21, 1991
• Place of death: New York, New York

Drawing on his own experiences as a dancer in theater and television productions, Dante coauthored the book for the groundbreaking Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical A Chorus Line, which chronicled the struggles and triumphs of aspiring Broadway dancers.

Early Life

Born Conrado Morales in the Puerto Rican neighborhoods near Spanish Harlem in New York, Nicholas Dante (NIHK-oh-lahs DAHN-tay), an effeminate child who loved to make up fabulous stories about fantasy places, never fit with the machismo culture of his working-class environs. His father loved films and took his son to see motion pictures nearly every week. The boy was entranced by lavish musicals, particularly the films of Cyd Charisse. When he was alone, which was often, he would practice dance moves. In his early teens, when he went alone to motion picture theaters along Forty-second Street and would be propositioned by male patrons, he came to understand that he was gay. He struggled with the realization. Indeed, he left Catholic high school at fourteen because of the atmosphere of intolerance; for example, the principal told him counseling might “fix” the “problem” of his homosexuality.

Dante dreamed of being a journalist but rejected this career because it would require a college degree. For the next decade, he danced when he could in nightclubs and Off-Broadway theaters. It was during this time that he changed his name; he had never felt Puerto Rican and producers had told him he looked Mediterranean. Initially he tried the Greek-sounding Nikolas Dante and then the more Italian Nicholas Dante. He found work in ensemble dance numbers for television productions, most notably a 1968 special featuring Olympic skater Peggy Fleming and several appearances in production numbers for The Ed Sullivan Show, as well as in nightclub revues, including drag clubs. In between, he worked in restaurants. His break came in 1970, when he performed in the ensemble of Applause, the Tony Award-winning musical starring Lauren Bacall. This show ran for two years.

Life’s Work

In 1974, a friend, Michael Bennett, a successful choreographer, invited Dante to participate in informal talk sessions Bennett was conducting with Manhattan dancers struggling to find success in the competitive world of professional theater. Known as gypsies, these gifted dancers worked show to show, performing in choruses and in touring companies, seldom achieving stardom. Bennett had already conceived of a musical based on these dancers and was gathering stories by taping the sessions.

The material, more than twenty-four hours of tape, needed to be shaped into a musical book. Bennett enlisted an enthusiastic Dante. Dante worked for nearly eight months. Later accounts differ as to whether Dante was overwhelmed or whether he requested a fresh perspective, but for whatever reason, James Kirkwood, Jr., who had written a modestly successful novel Dante admired, was enlisted to bring the book to completion. The result was an innovative kind of musical, a montage theater piece without a conventional plot. The play would be an audition among seventeen aspiring dancers competing for eight spots. An autocratic director would elicit from each performer his or her life story, dreams, and struggles. With an accomplished musical score by multiple Oscar-winner Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by newcomer Edward Kleban, A Chorus Line premiered in May, 1975, to lavish critical praise.

Among the most moving moments was a thinly veiled account of Dante’s own experience, the monologue of a gay Puerto Rican dancer who calls himself Paul San Marco. Paul had adopted an Italian-sounding name to escape who he was. As he opens up to the director, Paul confesses his struggles with his homosexuality and how he could not bear to tell his parents. The riveting monologue, nearly eight minutes, climaxes with Paul talking about getting work in a drag show. The show was ready to head to Chicago when Paul’s parents surprised him by coming to the theater, only to find their son costumed as a showgirl. Expecting a confrontation, Paul is stunned to hear his father, choked with tears, tell the producer to take care of his “son,” the first time Paul could remember his father ever calling him that. The monologue was an emotional highlight in the musical, and the actor who played Paul, Sammy Williams, won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. The musical itself won nine Tonys in 1976, including Best Musical, and that year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama, shared by the five men—Bennett, Kirkwood, Dante, Hamlisch, and Kleban—responsible for the show’s inception. A Chorus Line ran for nearly fifteen years, 6,137 performances, the longest run in Broadway history to that time.

Not surprisingly, Dante never again found the same level of success. He wanted to continue writing but struggled, authoring the book for a musical based on the life of 1920’s singer Al Jolson, which had only limited success. In the 1980’s, now in his forties, he performed irregularly, playing Paul in productions of A Chorus Line. In 1989, he was diagnosed with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). In his last years, thanks in part to an experimental therapy program that involved massive doses of medication, Dante came to peace with himself and even returned to writing. He died from complications from the disease in 1991, at the age of forty-nine.

Significance

Drawing on his own difficult adolescence, Nicholas Dante brought to the collaborative creation of the book for A Chorus Line a sense of the lived life of a struggling gypsy, the world of Broadway dancers, and this immediacy ensured that the characters in the ensemble cast emerged as real people with real dreams. With an unerring ear for dialogue, thanks to his own upbringing on the streets of New York, and his keen sense of character, Dante helped give the landmark musical its riveting authenticity.

Bibliography

Kirkwood, James, Jr., Edward Kleban, and Nicholas Dante. A Chorus Line: The Complete Book of the Musical. New York: Applause Books, 2000. Commemorative edition to mark the musical’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Includes detailed account of the play’s inception.

Ramirez, Rafael L. What It Means to Be a Man: Reflections on Puerto Rican Masculinity. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1999. Seminal study in the patriarchal culture of machismo that created the pressures and isolation of Dante’s formative years.

Viagas, Robert, Baayork Lee, and Thommie Walsh. On the Line: The Creation of A Chorus Line. New York: Limelight Editions, 2006. Anecdotal history of the landmark musical through recollections of the seventeen actors who originated the roles.