On Broadway.

John Selya wants us to forget Movin' Out.

Fat chance. His gravity-defying, head-spinning performance as Eddie is imprinted on the memory of anyone who saw him in it--and that amounts to a lot of people. Twyla Tharp's brilliant evocation of the Vietnam War era ran for three years and made Selya, a veteran of American Ballet Theatre and the Tharp company, a Broadway star.

But in her latest show, The Times They Are A-Changin', things have, well, changed. As in Movin' Out, Tharp has mined the songs of a music icon--in this case, Bob Dylan--and fashioned a narrative context for them. But that's where the similarities end. Instead of a story grounded in the reality of Billy Joel's Long Island characters and the Vietnam War, her new musical offers metaphors in a shambling traveling circus more reminiscent of Fellini than Barnum and Bailey. The surreal elements include trampolines embedded in the stage and acrobatics aplenty. But it's not a dance show--like performers in traditional musicals, the denizens of this circus sing their own songs (Dylan classics like "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Desolation Row," as well as lesser-known ones). And in another departure, Selya, 36, is not the star.

"I'm in the ensemble," he said during a break from rehearsals, looking a little worried. "I am moving. I am helping propel the plot. I am dancing with other people. But I can't tell you that I'm really dancing a lot in it."

His fear is that fans expecting the high-flying pyrotechnics of Movin' Out--his own parents included-will feel let down. And the show's history, helps fuel the misconceptions. Tharp had originally cast Selya as a lead. "But I couldn't sing well enough. So she said, "This is not your thing." And I knew it. So I just stepped aside." He was not in the show when it tried out in San Diego. Like the first draft of Movin' Out, the first version of The Times They Are A-Changin' was not well-received by the critics, who noted that they were expecting more dance. By the time Selya went to San Diego to see the show, Tharp was furiously revamping it for this month's opening at the Brooks Atkinson. One of her changes involved a new, devilish character called Lucibeel (a portmanteau name combining Lucifer and Beelzebub). She offered it to Selya, who jumped at the chance. So it was not unreasonable to expect that with Selya added to the cast, there would be lots of new, flashy choreography for him to do.

That's not at all how it turned out, he said, and he doesn't mind a bit. "It's Dylan, it's Twyla, and the burden isn't like the burden I had in Movin' Out," he said. "I look forward to being part of the process, to creating a character, whether that character is showcased or is in the shadows somewhere."

Tharp, he said, was initially concerned that he wouldn't be interested in a non-starring role. "A lot of people turn down opportunities because they feel that it's not big enough. If you want to sacrifice a chance to perform just because you're not going to be the star--are you kidding me? You do it because you want to have the experience and dance to Bob Dylan and sing Bob Dylan and work with Twyla and be on Broadway."

Admittedly, the "process" can be difficult. "Twyla will never, ever let you in frontally, as she likes to put it. She's not going to give you a breakdown like, 'This person grew up on a farm and they're missing a tooth and they have overalls.' She'll give you little hints. Like she'll ask you if you've read these books--and of course you never have. And she'll ask if you've seen these movies, and of course you never have."

His response was not to hit the library and the video store to catch up with Tharp's inspirations. "I go, 'What have I seen and what have I read that has the same quality that she's described?' It's much more gratifying than her giving you a summer reading list. She enables you to take what you have absorbed throughout your life and impart the qualities or the characteristics that make sense."

For Lucibeel, she suggested Dickens villains with overblown self-images. "There's a kind of pompousness that she was after," he said. "So I go in my files--what villains do I know that have had an inflated idea about themselves? There are also a lot of references to La Strada, the Fellini movie--the one movie that I've ever seen that she has drawn from."

Selya also looked at early Tharp dances like Eight Jelly Rolls and Bum's Rush. "The steps were more character-y than what she's done recently. Less bravura. Less virtuosic. What she wants, I think, is almost a vaudevillian quality. And she's always looked at movement in a kind of clowny way--an exaggerated awkwardness that requires a graceful dancer."

Much as Selya wants audiences to forget Movin' Out, he's not about to. For all the standing ovations and autograph hounds, the show took its toll. And surprisingly, the physical wear and tear wasn't the worst of it. "Mentally," he said, "that was a hard thing to do, because of the focus it takes. The first three weeks, even the first year, you're flying high. But then, you're doing the show with no adrenaline, because you've been there and you've done that a lot. Just to get up for it I would drive myself, and, I think, some of the people around me, crazy."

"I enjoyed every single second of it," he added, but he wasn't sorry when the show closed. Lucibeel will be different: "Something physically within reach, that I can do eight times a week, and that I can sustain for a long time and not worry." And Eddie? "That was a custom hot rod made to my specifications," he said. "That happens once in a lifetime. If you're lucky."

Sylviane Gold has written on theater for Newsday and The New York Times.