FLOSS, FOSSE & FOSSELAND.

The derby tilted just so, the elbow bent, the fingers splayed, the hand limp, the body frozen in a pose, all arrogant yet mocking sexuality, the whole shape disgendered as a black silhouette picked out by the glitter-dust of showbiz and immortalized by the razzle-dazzle of smoke and mirrors--yep, kids, we are back in good old Fosseland.

The dance musical Fosse, now on Broadway, proves a pungent celebration of showbiz dancing and a remarkable living memorial to the special talents of one of Broadway's master hoofers, Bob Fosse, who died, far too young, in 1987 at the age of sixty. The show's elements--both in its material and its performance--are perfectly fused into a single entity: the absolute, distilled magic of Fosse, with all that odd, alienating and alienated difference that made him a cut apart, and in many ways a cut above, his Broadway contemporaries.

The Fosse style, as solidly inimitable as it is slavishly imitated, is a totally personal theatrical synthesis of so many elements--the jazz dance of Jack Cole, the antagonistic footlights stare of Anna Sokolow, the dramatic impact of Robbins, the traditional soft-shoe of vaudeville, the insecure bravura of Chaplin, the breezy sophistication of Astaire, the insouciant if sweaty acrobatics of Gene Kely. Yet Fosse made it all slightly edgy, slightly different. With its impersonal personality, its generic sexiness, even its puppet mechanics, the Fosse style is showbiz rendered dazzlingly chic and it becomes the apotheosis of deft. It is the style dreamed of, whether asleep or awake, by the Broadway gypsy tribe of dancing fools.

It was his 1978 show Dancin' that Fosse, in effect, suggested a new theatrical genre, the dance musical. For various reasons--Fosse's own untimely death for one, and possibly the even earlier death of his Broadway rival, Michael Bennett, for another--it has never been picked up. Some people might point to Jerome Robbins' Broadway, itself a landmark show but essentially a handsomely fabricated anthology of Broadway highlights that had originally been directed and choreographed by Robbins, not a new pure dance musical.

Despite its strangely hostile critical reception--for I was one of only two mainstream theater critics who raved about it when it opened--Dancin' ran for 1,774 performances. This makes it all the more strange that it has waited until now to find a successor, and even that successor is largely more of the same. Although it was a new genre --certainly a fresh Broadway concept--the seemingly revolutionary all-dance musical revue was really only a musical where dancing takes the place of the customary book and sometimes the lyrics. After its opening, master lyricist and book writer Alan Jay Lerner fired off an ironic congratulatory telegram to Fosse: "You finally did it. You got rid of the author."

This dance musical dance should not have proved difficult to repeat, and I suppose that a couple of Graciela Daniele's angst-ridden, danced-through Broadway shows, although purely dramatic in hopeful purpose, reveal the Fosse influence. This new show, Fosse, actually takes off where Dancin' ended. It offers the pure essence of Fosse, without the kind of defensive crankiness that led him in Dancin' to use that horrendous and tasteless skit on the ballet barre, and pushes the dance musical to a new level. Creative credit for all this--apart from the all-important spirit and imagination of Fosse himself--belongs to four people: Chet Walker, Richard Maltby, Ann Reinking, and the shoe's artistic adviser, Gwen Verdon.

It was Walker, a longtime Fosse associate dance captain, who first had the idea of the revue and discussed it with Fosse as early as 1986, and he is responsible for the re-creation of Fosse's original choreography. Reinking is both codirector and cochoreagrapher, while Maltby is named as the director, as well as coconceiver, alongside Reinking and Walker. Most of what is onstage are new adaptations and realizations of Fosse's stage work, including, not unexpectedly, quite a lot taken directly from Dancin'. What is new and remarkable, however, is Walker's adaptation of Fosse's work in TV and movies, never seen before onstage, and the dance segues, transitions, lead-ins, and crossovers, expertly provided by Reinking.

Now, more than a decade after Fosse's death, it is possible to begin some kind of assessment of him as a pop choreographer. In Broadway terms, he was obviously in the very first rank. Although both Balanchine and Robbins exerted significant influence on Broadway dance and theater, they cannot truly be regarded as Broadway babies, simply because their lasting achievements lie elsewhere. Fosse was not in their league; he had flair rather than genius, style rather than technique. And interestingly, I don't think the theater was where he really excelled--it was in movies that he seemed to come, belatedly, into his true kingdom. Although he made only five feature films, I suspect he deserves to be remembered as one of the great movie directors of his time.

I had the opportunity a few week ago to see a decent selection of his TV work at the altogether admirable Museum of Television and Radio, which was giving public screenings of a thirty-seven-year-old program aired on the series The American Musical Theatre that had featured Fosse and Verdon. It offered a fascinating insight into Fosse's thoughts and creative motivations, along with vivid pictures of him as a dancer.

This led me into an exploration of the Museum's Fosse collection, with his appearances on such shows as The Colgate Comedy Hour (with Martin and Lewis), Jackie Gleason's Cavalcade of Stars, and The Ford Startime Show. Here were glimpses of Fosse's dance act with his first wife, Mary Ann Niles, and some of his early choreagraphy, such as The Streets of Laredo, a sort of High Noon ballet featuring Tommy Rall. The impression left is that of an extraordinarily nifty performer but a markedly derivative choreographer. Laredo, a terrible, flagrant borrowings --almost steals--from Eugene Loring and William Dollar.

This new Fosse reveals, I think, the very best of him both as a Broadway choreographer and as a Broadway showman. Yet, after the dust finally settles on his reputation, I suspect he will eventually be remembered more for his movies. For Fosse it was always "Showtime, folks!" Give them that old razzle-dazzle. A limitation, yes, but a limitation he parlayed into wizardry.

Senior editor Clive Barnes, a contributor to Dance Magazine since 1956, writes about dance and theater for the New York Post.