Making it in movin' out: Twyla Tharps modern story ballet is a career-making gig for its dancing cast.

There has never been a better group of dancers in the history of Broadway." The man pronouncing these words, Emanuel Azenberg, is in a good position to know. True, as one of the producers of Twyla Tharp's Movin' Out, he's probably not the most objective observer; on the other hand, he's been in the theater business since the 1950s, and one of his shows was a little thing called Jerome Robbins' Broadway.

But we don't have to take his word for it. A look at the bios of the twenty-six dancers Tharp handpicked for the musical is enough to convey how extraordinary a cast this is. They've danced in a broad range of top-drawer companies, from La La La Human Steps to Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey to the Pennsylvania Ballet. And that's just the ensemble. The principals, most of whom were part of Tharp's most recent troupe, are John Selya, Keith Roberts, and Ashley Tuttle, who have all danced with American Ballet Theatre; Elizabeth Parkinson, a former star with the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago; Benjamin G. Bowman, who spent seven years with New York City Ballet; and Scott Wise, whose best-known credit is, well, Jerome Robbins' Broadway.

Wise won a Tony in 1989 for his work in that show. Back then, it was not unusual for dancers to pick up Tonys for featured performances in musicals. But lately, it's gotten harder; in recent years, the award has been more likely to go to singing actors like George Hearn and Audra McDonald. So how will the stars of Movin' Out, who neither sing nor speak in this all-dance tale of the Vietnam era and its aftermath, fare at awards time?

This is not an idle question. In 2000, there was plenty of discussion about how to deal with Susan Stroman's Contact, which wowed critics and audiences despite scant dialogue and no live music whatsoever. Movin' Out's Billy Joel songs, which propel the characters through three decades, from euphoria to sadness and then back again, are all performed onstage (by Michael Cavanaugh in the evenings and Wade Preston at matinees). But the only time anyone speaks is when Wise, as a drill sergeant, browbeats his recruits and hup-two-threes them through their maneuvers. This shouldn't be that hard to deal with: No one points a finger and says "Opera!" when a sung-through musical like Les Miserables or this season's short-lived but beautifully crafted Amour shows up. Movin' Out may technically be ballet, but it's vernacular ballet, just as Les Mis is vernacular opera. Why not just call it a danced-through musical? Still, you can expect more controversy this spring about categories and definitions as the members of the Tony nominating committee struggle to honor the achievement this work represents.

And honor it they must. It's not just that after a rocky start in Chicago it has turned into one of the major hits of the season. It's that Tharp has taken the rather tired conventions of the story ballet and retooled them for the twenty-first century. To begin with, she's using rock 'n' roll dance idioms, with the rhythms provided not by a typical Broadway pit band but by hard-driving rock musicians. (Some have played for Billy Joel.) Instead of using fusty mime sequences to advance the plot, she opts for natural-looking movement that segues almost invisibly into dance. And she's shaped the choreography for the characters, as opposed to doing it the other way round.

The end result is that Movin' Out is just about unrecognizable as a ballet. Even though there's a scene--a quite intentional homage to Giselle--in which Tuttle dons pointe shoes, the show feels much more like a musical than a ballet. The story Tharp has teased out of the Joel albums, about five friends from Long Island, where Joel grew up, soon overtakes the choreography--there are actually moments when you forget the characters are speaking this alien language. They are simply drawn but compelling, and brilliantly acted by the dancers. Eddie (Selya), Tony (Roberts), and James (Bowman) are three pals whose carefree rock 'n' roll years come to an abrupt end in Vietnam. Brenda (Parkinson) and Judy (Tuttle) are left behind to deal with the fallout, which includes tragedy and, ultimately, redemption. As they make their way through the 1960s, '70s, and '80s to a succession of familiar and unfamiliar Joel songs, we witness their high spirits and exuberant sexuality as well as deep wells of indignation and loss. It feels almost too contemporary to be a ballet.

One of the main reasons is the sensational performance of Selya in the central role of Eddie. (This is not to take away anything from William Marrie, the superb dancer-actor who did the role at the matinees until his untimely death last November [see Transitions, March 2003], or, for that matter, from the other alternates I saw, Holly Cruikshank, David Gomez, and Dana Stackpole.) Selya is familiar, of course, to ABT audiences and, more recently, to those who have seen Tharp's company. But it's safe to say he's never had an opportunity like this, and he runs with it. His Eddie starts out a genial show-off--a lout, a charmer. In the war, he falls apart completely--Selya's portrayal of the breakdown is nothing short of terrifying--and his subsequent anguish and renewal come vividly to life. Joel says Selya even looks like the friend who inspired his original Eddie in "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant." Azenberg never met the real Eddie, but he's still in awe of Selya: "A guy who looks like a fullback and can jump thirty feet in the air!"

Selya was doing his thing even in Chicago. But there, Movin' Out was too busy to be completely effective, Tharp says. She likens it to going into an editing room with all the raw footage for a film. "You've got a lot of material that you know is not going to get into the picture," she says. She simplified the story and tried to accommodate those in the audience who couldn't quite figure out whether they should be looking at the band and listening to the dancers or vice versa.

The three New York audiences I've been in didn't have any trouble with Movin' Out's unconventional form, and not too many were worried about whether it was a musical or a ballet or something else entirely. "Why call it anything?" asks Billy Joel. "Why not let people figure it out?"

Sylviane Gold has written about theater for the Boston Phoenix, The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, The New York Times, and other publications.