My buddy Bob Elisberg found this on YouTube and linked to it on his fine blog. It's the most talked-about song/dance from the 1973 Broadway musical Seesaw, which starred Michele Lee, Tommy Tune and the recently-deceased Ken Howard. The songs were by Dorothy Fields and Cy Coleman and it was directed by Michael Bennett after the original director was fired during outta-town tryouts, along with much of the cast.
The book was also tossed out, replaced by one credited to Bennett, though rumors abound of considerable Neil Simon involvement. In his autobiography, Simon reveals that he did some significant uncredited rewrites on the book for A Chorus Line, also directed by Bennett, but he makes no mention of working secretly on Seesaw. So make of that what you will.
As Bob mentions, there isn't much film or video of Seesaw but he came across a video of Tommy Tune and others from the Broadway cast doing this dazzling number on a telethon. This is quite a find.
Bob wonders why there's no applause from anyone at the end and I think I can explain that. From the point where Mr. Tune tosses his microphone away, the audio is all pre-recorded, taken from what was recorded for the cast album. The live musicians on stage aren't even trying to pretend they're playing. So my guess is that the audio engineers on the telecast had all the microphones off during the performance and didn't get around to turning them back on promptly when it was over.
By the way: I think the featured balloon-clad dancer is the wonderful Baayork Lee. Betcha when this number was staged, Michael Bennett had to pick out one dancer to perform alongside Tune so, natch, he picked the shortest one he had. Ms. Lee later originated the role of Connie Wong in A Chorus Line. Her character was based of course on interviews with her about her own life and she had a song called "Four-Foot-Ten." It itemized the personal and professional challenges of her lack of height but it was cut before the show debuted, though it has been heard on at least one recent CD reissue. Lee later became a top choreographer and even staged the dances for the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line. She's quite charming in this number as are all the performers…