There are scenes and individual dramatic sections in the plot, the dancing is, for most purposes and purposes, nonstop. And Tharp's dancing company is astonishingly enthusiastic. They have to be, assigned the frenzied and athletic motions Tharp has them exercising for the better part of two hours. But the dancers make it look like it's the most ordinary things any of them could be doing. Movin' Out has surely been well cast.

Movin' Out story revolves around a group of five friends (John Selya, Elizabeth Parkinson, Keith Roberts, Ashley Tuttle, and Benjamin G. Bowman) from their 1960s high school graduation to their reunion after some years. Within this period, everyone finds or loses love, the men go off to Vietnam where one dies on the battleground. There's a plot synopsis offered in the Playbill, and for a better reason, with most of the dialogue unspoken, the characters and story can at times be a challenge to understand. Tharp's dancing is perpetually communicative, but normally in too general a way to really distinguish the characters or their relationships to each other.

The dancers' attributes do come forth over the course of action, as they get ahead more solo time, and when it does come, it's hard to not wish it had taken place earlier. Some of the good moments are, the funeral setting near the end of the first act, Selya's lengthy dances of hurt and anxiety in the second act, and a flashback presenting the horrors of Vietnam. But many of the rest of the dances, extravagant as they are, rarely engage the audience emotionally on their own.

The evening's perilous balance is never more marked than at the curtain call when Cavanaugh throws the audience into a tumult by directing the band into the first few melodies of "New York State of Mind." He dominates the evening until the final scene, Joel's conduit to the viewers, sometimes seeming to hedge Tharp completely. Her work does occasionally seem no more significant than Santo Loquasto's sets or Suzy Benzinger's lights, missing the emotional music and its main performer provide for the show. This makes Movin' Out satisfying and musically cheering.

Tharp's work is best when it incorporates most solidly with the music and Cavanaugh's emotional performance. The most upright example of this is the first number, "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me," centering on the friends' adventures in high school. The others are less efficient, lining from the obvious to the curious.