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Photo Credit :: Joan Marcus
Arts & Entertainment
Movin’ Out at the Richard Rodgers Theatre
By Mark Thompson & Robert Doyle
November 20, 2005
 
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Calling all lovers of Terpsichore: get thee to the Richard Rodgers Theatre asnap. For it’s exactly as Charles Isherwood suggested in his Times review in yesterday’s Arts&Leisure: to miss Twyla Tharp and Billy Joel’s MOVIN’ OUT on B’way would be a crime, for which the only punishment would be to bang one’s head against the wall while listening to “New York State of Mind” for the next sixteen years with the hope that the show might return.

But even so, it’s unlikely that the show’s remounting could ever assemble a company of dancers so singularly and collectively talented. With their many years spent dancing with the Joffrey, ABT, Paul Taylor, Eliot Feld, Donald Byrd, David Parsons, as well as Twyla Tharp’s own company, and dozens of other dance companies across the globe, these kids can move. Not only the exceptional principals, such as Elizabeth Parkinson, Keith Roberts, Ashley Tuttle, upon whom much well-deserved praise has been heaped, but the ensemble is equally gifted (and here, particular mention must go to Cody Green who nails his multiple roles with a thrilling combination of both Fred Astaire’s grace and Gene Kelly’s athleticism). This is an ensemble able to take over the principal roles, as several such as Mr. Green have done, and still wow the audience.

For this show is all about the dancers. What a company. What bodies, what energy. And right now, in this autumn of our nation’s discontent, the story that this dance tells – and believe me, it tells a most heartbreaking tale – is more resonant than ever before. You don’t have to have survived the Vietnam era to understand the poignancy of this story, or to feel the pain and the horror (and often the joy as well) of these characters as they whirl, glide, and gyrate around the stage.

And when they couple-- And when they dance as one-- Any aficionado of dance will feel again that pull toward the stage and the desire to have one’s body move as fluidly, with as much exuberance, to defy gravity, to shake it off and work it out. What joy to have such incredible dancers on the Great White Way – and to have a show which reminds you, again, of the power of theatre to resonate with the times and to encapsulate the anger and the grief that these times provoke within.

You have until the 11th of December to witness this Terpsichorean orgy firsthand. Anyone who loves dance must heed the call.