I feel all culturized ...

Knoxville has (had, as they lost their grant .. go them) a contract to bring Broadway shows to the city. For the past couple of years, Broadway shows to have come through the city include Annie, Cats, and Stomp (there's more, but that's all I can think of at the moment).

Last night, Patrick and I went to see Movin' Out - a show choreographed and produced by the legendary Twyla Tharp.

It was different.

I hadn't really heard much about it outside of it being an excellent musical and that it won a number of Tony awards for its Broadway run. But that was really about it.

So the lack of dialogue was really surprising. The cast only dances - there is no dialogue between them and none of them sing. They dance the story while a group suspended at the top of the stage sing Billy Joel song after Billy Joel song. So the storyline relied completely on the songs and the dancers' ability to show emotion in their movements.

It was hard to follow at first. If I didn't have the booklet that showed who was who and explained the storyline, I would have been clueless as to what was going on. And it was still a bit difficult in the early part of the story.

We were probably into the 2nd or 3rd song before I found any type of cohesiveness between the songs and the dancers.

The dancers aren't the original Broadway cast, of course. But I doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference. And while a co-worker explained the need to have 5 different men available for the lead role, I didn't really get it until I saw the amount of energy they had to expend. How the person playing the role of Eddie made it from start to finish with the same height of jumps and same enthusiasm in his movements, I have no idea.

2 hours of dancing (with a 15 minute intermission) is crazy.

The dancing was a blend of contemporary and ballet. There were maybe just a couple times when there wasn't constant movement on the stage. And there were a few times I was sure the arm and leg gestures were just to fill space. But the majority of it flowed and made sense.

At least to me. Patrick's take on it was ... if they would just dance and play music, it'd be fine. But the story line distracted him.

As for me, I repeatedly found myself completely immersed in the story.

Overall I give it a thumbs up. The beginning was a bit choppy for me, but it was well worth it.