i can do that
I've been listening, for professional reasons, to the song "I Can Do That," from the soundtrack to A Chorus Line. That's the one where a guy tells the story of how he became a dancer: watches sis go pit-a-pat, says I can do that. Goes to dance class, has it made, "and so I staaayyyeeed, the rest of my life."
On the cast recording, that last line resonates. The way he sings it, you can hear every drop of pleasure he takes in having stayed, every bit of gusto in having danced the rest of his life. But there's a great line that happens toward the end of the song that fills in a lot more: after a showoffy dixielandish dance section, he recaps with the shouted line, "That I can do!" before ending with the final titular line.
That phrase says it all, no? The song doesn't go into detail about what this person's experience was in school, trying to do all the other things that boys are supposed to be able to do: throwing balls, catching balls, snapping towels, tackling, bantering with the girls. But the grammatical inversion of "that I can do," with its unmistakable meaning that his discovery of something he's good at is an arrival and a homecoming, puts a ping into the song that lifts it to another level, without ever wallowing in the usual outcast-art-fag tropes.
It's the most redolent phrase in the whole show. Of course, the show being what it is, that's not saying a whole lot. To be more accurate, it's the most redolent phrase I've come across in that genre in a long time. Fun to have something to point and click on.
On the cast recording, that last line resonates. The way he sings it, you can hear every drop of pleasure he takes in having stayed, every bit of gusto in having danced the rest of his life. But there's a great line that happens toward the end of the song that fills in a lot more: after a showoffy dixielandish dance section, he recaps with the shouted line, "That I can do!" before ending with the final titular line.
That phrase says it all, no? The song doesn't go into detail about what this person's experience was in school, trying to do all the other things that boys are supposed to be able to do: throwing balls, catching balls, snapping towels, tackling, bantering with the girls. But the grammatical inversion of "that I can do," with its unmistakable meaning that his discovery of something he's good at is an arrival and a homecoming, puts a ping into the song that lifts it to another level, without ever wallowing in the usual outcast-art-fag tropes.
It's the most redolent phrase in the whole show. Of course, the show being what it is, that's not saying a whole lot. To be more accurate, it's the most redolent phrase I've come across in that genre in a long time. Fun to have something to point and click on.
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