The dance musical "Movin' Out" and the comedy "The Graduate" are two of the headliners on the Broadway at Chrysler Hall series for 2004-2005. Subscriptions are now on-sale.

This was supposed to be a story about Sting's great show last night at the Beacon Theatre, and the fact that we've now spent more time with His Stingness and beautiful wife Trudie Styler in the last couple of weeks than with our own family. In fact, here's something to chew on: Two nights ago I actually sat at a table at the very private club in New York called Bungalow 8 with Sting, Trudie, Bruce Springsteen, and his wife, Patti Scialfa. I thought I was hallucinating.

But wait! Stop the presses. Into Sting's dressing room post-concert last night comes a nice looking grey-haired man who announces that he is Steve Lee, and he is the father of Kate Lee, the 22 year-old young woman who is going to marry Billy Joel. As you may imagine, this got everyone's attention including Sting, Trudie, Sting's manager Kathy Schenker, my editor Marla Lehner, and Brooke Shields and her husband, Chris Henchy, who'd come backstage to say hello and wound up having a glass of Champagne and meeting Sting.

What do you get when you take the modern and innovative dance of the legendary choreographer Twyla Tharp and combine it with the classic music of "Piano Man" Billy Joel?

You get the sensation of the 2002 theatre season, "Movin' Out." Time Magazine declared it the "#1 Show of The year!" Ben Brantley of The New York Times called it "a shimmering portrait of an American generation," and Richard Zolgin declared "Twyla Tharp and Billy Joel make Broadway rock!"

It seems sort of ironic, considering it was deemed a turkey during its pre-Broadway try-out in Chicago during the summer of 2002.

Billy Joel's "children" were "out making a living for the old man" last night at the Colonial Theatre where he took in "Movin' Out" with his 22 year-old fiancée, Kate Lee.

"It's amazing to me that my music has a life beyond the old man," said the 54 year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer after taking in Twyla Tharp's rockin' musical dance party based on Joel's catalog of tunes. "You know how hard it was to give birth to all of them?"

Apparently it was all worth it since the performance - and Joel's not-such-a-surprise appearance on stage to croon a couple of tunes after the curtain call - was met with much hootin' and hollerin' from the crowd.

But Joel said although he's popped up on the "Movin' Out" stage in New York, he's seen the show two dozen times and refuses to follow the National Tour.

"Maybe I'll go to LA or San Francisco, but not every city," he said. "But I had to come here. Boston's special."

Lee, whom he met last spring in the Big Apple and got engaged to in January in St. Bart's, has seen "Movin' Out" at least a dozen times. Now, that's love!

The young West Virginia beauty, who was sporting a five-carat diamond ring last night, has studied culinary arts and has taken on a post-fame gig as restaurant correspondent for the PBS show "Living It Up!"

"She's a great cook," said her future hubby, who has a taste for fine cuisine. "She knows food."

Joel was mum on the wedding date last night, but at least he's scored the blessing of Lee's dad - who is six years younger than his future son-in-law!

According to Fox 411 columnist Roger Friedman, Kate's pop - a "sophisticated Midwestern banker" named Steve Lee - made quite the splash when he stopped by Sting's dressing room following his Wednesday night performance at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre.

The 48 year-old grey-haired man drew the attention of the star-studded room, including Sting's wife, Trudie Styler, and Brooke Shields, when he announced: "My daughter is marrying Billy Joel."

Kate Lee will be Joel's third wife. He was married to Elizabeth Weber, his business-manager and later to supermodel Christie Brinkley. He and the "Uptown Girl" have one daughter, Alexa Ray, 18.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of "Movin' Out" - and there are many, many impressive aspects of this production - is that all four of the primary characters go from heaven to hell and back again in less than two hours. That's a tribute not only to Twyla Tharp's choreography, but the narrative art and unsparing energy she finds in Billy Joel's music and the great performances she elicits from the dancers at the Colonial Theatre.

The story in dance of five high-school buddies whose lives are torn apart when the three men go to Vietnam tears down so many barriers - between art and entertainment, pop music and high art, dance and theatre - that it doesn't matter what genre you reduce it to. Tharp bursts out of it.

Joel fans know of Brenda & Eddie from "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant." Eddie - played with a Springsteenish fervor and McEnroe-esque athleticism by Ron Todorowski - is breaking up with Brenda, which leaves an opening for Tony, the wise guy fifth wheel. David Gomez brings a supple mischievousness to the prewar Tony and a high-stepping depressiveness to his post-traumatic stress. And he had better step high because Brenda is Holly Cruikshank, who looks like she could crack the Celtics starting line-up, though she obviously has better things to do. Cruikshank was the woman in the yellow dress from the road version of "Contact" and she's still dancing up a sexy storm. Then there is the nice couple, James (Matthew Dibble) and Judy (Julieta Gros), who have their moments, particularly Gros. But with Joel and Tharp, only the good die young and only the bad dance great.

Well, not bad really. They are more sinned against than sinning and Tharp gets us rooting for all the characters, partly because these are fine actors as well as dancers and Tharp's choreography builds character so economically. A loose salute symbolizes Tony's irreverence; a bump of the hips captures Brenda's flirtatiousness.

Very little in "Movin' Out," which also features first-rate ensemble work, is merely ornate. Tharp weaves 26 songs together in this story with such intelligence and feeling that it sounds like a bona fide soundtrack of original material.

Darren Holden is a superb stand-in for Joel, leading a fine 10-piece band. Ranging from tenderness to gruffness, he sounded more like Joel than Joel, who came out for an encore last night.

Don't expect Joel again. In fact, you might not get Holden when you go, since he alternates with Matt Wilson and Gomez, Todorowski, and Cruikshank alternate with Corbin Popp, Brendan King, and Laurie Kanyok. But given how marvelously Tharp, who was also in last night's audience, has shaped this show, it's hard to imagine that the other cast will let anybody down.

You don't have to be in a "New York State of Mind." The Boston version is immaculate. Or as Billy Joel might say, immac-ack-ack-ack-aculate.

It's more dance musical than typical Broadway hit. Even so, "Movin' Out," the exhilarating marriage of Twyla Tharp's spins and twirls with classic tunes from Billy Joel, is one of the hottest shows around.

A choreographic blow-out, "Movin' Out" arrived at Boston's Colonial Theatre this week. And it deserves nothing but cheers.

As a concept, "Movin' Out" is brilliant. In the flesh, it's glittering.

Tharp, perhaps the most inventive choreographer of her generation, has, of course, worked with rock in the past. But in Joel's music she found a narrative thread. So a couple of years ago she put together a show featuring two dozen of the rocker's songs to tell the story of five friends coming of age during the Vietnam War.

If that sounds dated, it is not. With Joel's tunes heard in a context most of us have never considered, and Tharp's arresting steps, "Movin' Out" seems fresh and timely.

The show starts with the break-up of the Brenda & Eddie from Joel's "Scenes From An Italian Resturant," then introduces us to Tony, James and Judy. We follow them through good times and bad, through budding romance, the devastation of war and the nightmarish descent into drugs and self-loathing.

But in the end, Tharp allows these life-long buddies to be reborn in a joyous, celebratory flourish that's set to Joel's upbeat "The River of Dreams."

At its heart "Movin' Out" is basically a story ballet, a dance piece in which facial expressions and narrative gestures are almost as important as leaps and lifts.

Eddie, danced with visceral athleticism by Ron Todorowski, shows up at the opening of the show driving a small, red sports car.

He and Brenda, a lithe and statuesque Holly Cruikshank, have a falling out and Brenda, who jams her foot on his, tosses Eddie's ring from the balcony where the band is stationed.

But when it comes to the most intimate and lyrical moments of this bitter-sweet tale, Tharp says it with dance alone, as she does in the fluid pas de deux between Matthew Dibble's James and Julieta Gros's Judy that takes its inspiration from Joel's Rachmaninoff-esque "Reverie (Villa D'Este)."

Later Eddie dances with the ghost of James in a routine that mirrors one another's moves beautifully.

It is Tharp's genius that allows her to create dance that moves from dance theatre to abstraction without calling attention to itself, to shift from faux swing to deconstructed disco and classical ballet with such seamless ease.

And no matter what the style, there is always this appealing restlessness to her work, the kind of choreography that sometimes seems as though it will spin out of control, but always manages to hang on for dear life.

Todorowski was clearly the hit of Thursday's performance (there are two alternating casts), with his dazzling repertoire of flips, spins and leaps.

With "Prelude/Angry Young Man" blasting from the balcony, Todorowski opened the second half of the show with an explosive series of twirls.

It is at this point, after the trauma of war, that passion takes over. Eddie and friends, dressed in head bands and camouflage pants, punch and kick the air out of rage.

The dancing was freer, looser and even more out there on the edge.

Both Joel and Tharp showed up for the Boston opening. And as might be expected, Joel got a tumultous ovation as he walked in the theater, while no one paid any attention to Tharp. Probably no one recognized her, which says a lot about dance in America.

When the show was over, Tharp took to the stage for a deserved ovation, while Joel joined the band for a couple of encores, belting out a reprise of "Only The Good Die Young." Joel pointed to pianist and lead vocalist Darren Holden, as if to say, he's the man. But Holden just stretched his arms out and bowed down as if before a god.

Billy Joel, in town for the opening of his "Movin' Out" show at the Colonial Theatre the other night, wouldn't dish the date that he's going to marry 22 year-old culinary queen Kate Lee. And you know how we just hate that!

Well, you'd better hurry up, Bill; she's not getting any younger!

"Neither am I," said the 54 year-old groom-to-be, who we think is engaged in some cross-generational "River of Dreams."

According to our island spies, Joel and his fiancée were in a Vietnamese restaurant on the isle of St. Bart's (where the two got engaged last January) and the "Piano Man" was overheard giving his betrothed a primer on the Vietnam War.

"Over the Vietnamese food, he was explaining the Vietnam War to her," said our snoop. "It was tres amusing!"

Well, instead of having to "Tell Her About It," Billy should have just given Kate a copy of "Goodnight Saigon!"

After all, the conflict does play a prominent role in "Movin' Out," the Twyla Tharp dance party based on Joel's catalog of songs. And because Billy told the "Track" his lady love has seen the show at least a dozen times, it's high time he explained it to her!

The two met last spring in New York City after Joel and blonde Boston babe Anne Maxwell split.

Maxwell and Joel's relationship cooled after the "Big Shot" wrapped his car around a tree. He escaped serious injury in an accident six months earlier and days later checked into a Connecticut substance-abuse center to deal with a booze problem.

File Under: Keep it to yourself, it's his life.

"Movin' Out"

In other dispatches from "Brenda & Eddie Land," Joel offered up that he still pines for his place in Menemsha, the idyllic fishing village on Martha's Vineyard. Or should we say "the former idyllic fishing village?"

"The day the pink bus stopped in front of my house, I knew I had to get outta there," Joel said of the island's tourist transit.

"It stopped at my house, at Carly (Simon's) house, I knew I had to leave," he said. "But I'll never give up on New England."

By the way, after Joel sold his white house with the harbor view that he shared with "Wife #2" Christie Brinkley, Hollywood came calling. The seaside cottage was used in the filming of "Sabrina," the Harrison Ford-Julia Ormond remake of the 1954 flick.

Choreographer/director Twyla Tharp, composer/lyricist/performer Billy Joel, 16 supercharged dancers, a singer banging at the piano, and nine more musicians suspended over the stage made for an incandescent Boston opening of the national touring company of "Movin' Out," the hit 2002 dance musical that continues to draw crowds on Broadway. Tharp and Joel won't necessarily be present for future performances at the Colonial Theatre, but on press night last Thursday, the diminutive Tharp took a bow with the dancers at curtain call, and Joel came up from the audience to the second-story piano to belt out two songs and delight a packed house. He'd been met at the Colonial's front door by the glare of camera lights and reporters, and when he came down the aisle of the theatre, just before the start of the show, most of the audience rose and cheered.

Tharp's theatrical spectacle-cum-rock concert threads 26 numbers from the "Piano Man's" songbook into a musical score as it melds the show-biz smarts of Broadway with the dynamics and fizz of the rock concert genre while latching onto the passion, pain, and loss of the Vietnam era. We all know about the high school kids who were sent off to fight a senseless war and did not return or came back psychically scarred. But experiencing on a kinesthetic level a gut sucked in from fear or the protective closing of the body around wounded limbs is much more searing than listening to sermons, harangues, and the litany of regrets by the men in power who made it happen. And don't think it's only the past that resonates. It's hard to watch "Movin' Out" now without thinking of the soldiers on duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

True, the plot line sounds like a 1960s Dick & Jane primer. Eddie, Brenda, Tony, James, and Judy are buddies at a blue-collar suburban school. Eddie and Brenda break-up, Tony takes up with Brenda, James and Judy get married. Then the guys go off to war. Eddie and Tony come back; James' body is left on the battlefield. Act II recounts the brutal changes for all of them, until a final scene in which maturity brings reconciliation. But nevermind. Tharp is a dancemaker, not a playwright, and she's fashioned characters by means of every sort of dance style, from ballet to disco, from tango to modern dance, with a number of twitches, stumbles, and goofy banana-peel falls as a reminder of the everyday klutziness of us mortals. And under her boot-camp-like insistence, this road cast has been groomed into a first-class, fully engaged ensemble.

When Holly Cruikshank last graced a Boston stage, she was poured into a yellow dress and heading the Wang cast of contact. This time out, as Brenda, she hits the Colonial in a series of teeny-bopper outfits highlighted by a flippy red dress dreamed up by costume designer Suzy Benzinger, who mirrors the turbulent times in her now-period costumes. Cruikshank has a body that turns itself upside-down - no problem - and a pair of legs that stretch to the Milky Way. In demeanor, she's as fearless as a prizefighter, alternating between aggressive and defensive. A tumbling, turning marvel named Ron Todorowski as Eddie is all the more appealing when he strikes the pose of a ballet prince after shooting out some popping and grooving appropriated from the breakdance vocabulary. There's another cast of principals that alternates with this one because Tharpdance is demonic in its punishment of dancers' limbs and bodies, but this one rocked. Kudos also to the moody David Gomez as Tony; Julieta Gros as the mourning widow, Judy, dancing on pointe; and the poignant Brit, Matthew Dibble, as James.

Billy Joel can still rock them to the rafters.

The "Piano Man," whose tunes tell the story of an entire generation, made a surprise appearance Thursday night at the standing-room-only opening of "Movin' Out" at the Colonial Theatre.

He got a rousing standing ovation when he and his 22 year-old fiancée, Kate Lee, made their grand entrance. Then he brought the ecstatic crowd, packed with die-hard fans, to its feet as he sang a pulsating encore of "Only The Good Die Young" with the on-stage band that had wowed the crowd the previous two hours.

Joel's appearance was an exciting addition to what was already a thrilling night of hard-driving rock and dazzling dance, choreographed by another legend, Twyla Tharp.

Tharp conceived "Movin' Out" several years ago, then saw it through a tentative try-out in Chicago to a triumphant run on Broadway. It features more than two dozen of Joel's tunes, ranging from the sprightly pop of "Uptown Girl" to the sexy "Shameless," from the pensive "An Innocent Man" to the assertive "Big Shot."

Tharp weaves them together with a stirring storyline that takes five lifelong friends from Long Island through two turbulent decades that change them and the world around them forever.

The show opens with a driving "It's Still Rock and Roll To Me" performed by Darren Holden, lead vocalist on piano, and the rest of the stellar band, perched high above the stage on metal scaffolding.

Brenda, danced to perfection by the leggy, graceful Holly Cruikshank, and Eddie (Ron Todorowksi) are the prom queen and king who are splitting up in a waltz to "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant." Meanwhile James and Judy make plans for a life together, dancing to a medley of "Reverie (Villa D'Este)" and "Just The Way You Are."

In the next medley, Brenda returns and pairs up with Tony, a striking David Gomez, who partners the tall Cruikshank well. They make a great pair in "This Night" and "She's Got A Way."

But Vietnam throws all their youthful plans and dreams into turmoil. Tony, Eddie and James go off to war, and James pays the ultimate sacrifice.

As Judy danced impeccably on point by Julieta Gros mourns him, the others come back to a world forever changed.

They try drugs and sex and decadence to mask their pain, in pieces set to tunes like "Pressure, "Shameless," and "Prelude/Angry Young Man."

But ultimately, the group, minus James, gathers for a rousing reunion finale that reprises "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant."

Tharp has created a unique, innovative masterpiece with "Movin' Out," a thrilling night of theater that pays tribute to a generation and to Billy Joel's dynamite ballads and anthems.

The nifty trick of "Movin' Out," the Twyla Tharp dance piece that's set to the music of Billy Joel, is that it's forged by four creative forces. So if you momentarily tire of one component of the show, there's always another high-energy element ready to steal your attention.

You start, of course, with the time-tested, audience-approved music of Billy Joel and choreography of Twyla Tharp. And then, in the touring production that's now playing at the Colonial Theatre in Boston through April 10th, 2004, you can add "Piano Man" Darren Holden, sitting in for Joel on keyboard and vocals. Last, there's the rather astonishing, crowd-pleasing dance skills of Ron Todorowski, playing Eddie, the angry young man who leads us through this show (he alternates in the role with Brendan King).

This quartet of talent keeps the show fresh. If you start to tire of Joel's music, then you're suddenly dazzled anew by Todorowski's mad dance skills. Momentarily disinterested in Tharp's choreography? Then sit back and enjoy the muscular vocals of Holden, who perfectly balances honoring Joel without ever mimicking him. And his young pipes are probably the envy of even Joel these days.

The story that Tharp has cobbled together from 26 Joel songs is about as deep as a - well, as a Billy Joel song. At a Long Island high school in the 1960s (it feels a little more like the '50s), Tharp captures the adolescent fun that's often played to a backdrop of rock music ("It's Still Rock and Roll To Me"). But sweethearts Brenda & Eddie (Holly Cruikshank, who played the Girl in the Yellow Dress in the Boston stop of "Contact") are calling it quits ("Scenes From An Italian Restaurant"). Then the Vietnam War allows Tharp perhaps her most interesting concept - the dance of war, set to a version of "We Didn't Start The Fire" that's more discordant, drugged-up and hallucinogenic than Joel's hit.

The guilt, despair and loss of the war leads to drugs and loveless sex ("She's Got A Way") before there's forgiveness, reconciliation and redemption ("The River of Dreams"/"Keeping The Faith").

It's probably the nature of building a story out of pop songs that it isn't going to dig very deep. But that's not really the point. The point is that Tharp is a talented choreographer - but far more people recognize her distinctive name than have actually seen her work. So, while Tharp brings Joel art cred, Joel brings Tharp an entirely new audience.

And the choreographer has fun with Joel - the show looks like it's a blast to dance. In fact, "Movin' Out" provides a visceral enjoyment that's too often missing from modern dance and stage shows.

And, ironically, the show's frivolity becomes its most important message: The artist Twyla Tharp is inspired by Billy Joel's pop sensibilities. It's a validation of Joel's work, a confession of Tharp's tastes and a message to us all that it's OK to find inspiration and joy in something as frivolous as a pop song.

"Movin' Out" is a dance piece with a rock concert sensibility, and judging by the fun everyone is having at the Colonial Theatre, that's a recipe that more producers ought to cook up.

Once upon a time, on a private yacht floating off the isle of Manhattan, an average-looking man named Billy wed a beautiful woman named Christie.

Vows completed, they set sail and celebrated in style surrounded by family, friends, fine food, champagne and heavy security.

Back on shore, in the city of concrete and cabs, ordinary souls raised a glass, flickers of hope in their eyes.

Born in the Bronx and reared in a humble household on Long Island, Billy Joel attended school by day and worked odd jobs at night to help support his single mother. Like half the rest of the teenage world in the 1960s, he also played in a rock and roll band. Unlike most of the others, he stayed with it, developing a solo act and taking it to whatever places would hire him.

Christie Brinkley grew up in Malibu, California, the well-tended daughter of successful parents, an exceptionally beautiful girl who dreamed of Paris and art and after high school pursued both. One day, as she walked down a Paris street, she was discovered by a modeling agent.

By the early 1980s, both the "Piano Man" and the "Uptown Girl" were at the top of their respective fields.

They met on St. Bart's, the kind of place that was relatively new to him and home turf to her. Playing piano at a bar, he knew at once who she was. She had no idea who he was. Two Grammy Awards counted big in his world but didn't make much of a score in hers.

Just an ordinary Joe, she decided. From that day on, she always called him Joe.

The fact she called him anything was, of course, a vicarious triumph of unimaginable proportions for every guy who ever beheld a rich, beautiful woman and reprimanded himself for being so foolish as to fantasize she might even talk to him.

Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley not only talked, though, they started dating. Dating! And then he set the whole deal down in a song.

The song was "Uptown Girl," a simple, quaint picture of the average guy battling to somehow win the hand of the unattainable, anything-but-average woman. He saw her "high-class toys" and her "uptown boys." He "couldn't afford to buy her pearls." But maybe, just maybe, a "downtown man" would fascinate her.

I'll bet she's never had a back street guy
I'll bet her mama never told her why

The song itself was written in the style of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, one of Joel's favorite boyhood groups. The Four Seasons had tackled the gap between social classes themselves, in songs such as "Rag Doll," and "Uptown Girl" fit snugly into that tradition. It didn't hurt that it envisioned a happy ending in which the salt-of-the-earth guy lands the gorgeous fantasy girl when she realizes that beneath his ordinary Joe exterior lies an inner beauty as luminous as hers:

Maybe someday when my ship comes in
She'll understand what kind of guy I've been
And then I'll win

What he won first was another Grammy nomination, for Best Male Pop Vocal of 1983, after "Uptown Girl" reached #3 on the pop charts. He didn't formally win the lady's hand until two years later.

Billy Joel, despite the fact that he now had a rock-star career, a cover girl wife, multiple Grammy Awards, lots of money, millions of fans and homes in Manhattan, the Hamptons and Martha's Vineyard, somehow largely kept his working-guy image. It wasn't that the truth was any big secret. Everyone knew Billy had been rich and famous even before Christie didn't recognize him, and, contrary to the song, he really could afford to buy her pearls.

But as long as their marriage and the honorary pass it granted him to her uptown fashion world didn't take him too far from his roots, he was allowed some poetic license.

Especially when he confessed it made him a little ambivalent. "Christie buys me some great clothes from Charivari and, hey, I look the part," he said a year into the marriage. "And part of it is me stepping outside, taking a very bemused look at myself and saying, 'Who do you think you are? Let's come down a peg.'"

In the end, they did not live happily ever after - at least, together. They divorced in 1994, a split that sent Christie Brinkley back to her uptown world and, in some symbolic way, dispatched Billy Joel back downtown even as he shuffled between multi-million dollar mansions in the Hamptons.

In the city of concrete and cabs, ordinary souls raised a glass to their native son, flickers of understanding in their eyes.

On Broadway, "Movin' Out," Twyla Tharp and Billy Joel's exhilarating, innovative and deeply moving dance musical, has never achieved the smash hit status of, say, 'Hairspray'," which beat it out for the Tony for Best Musical last year.

But around the country, it's cleaning up.

The National Tour has been breaking box-office records in Detroit, Buffalo, Hartford, Pittsburgh and Appleton, Wisconsin.

In Pittsburgh alone, where the show doesn't begin performances until April 20th, 2004, "Movin' Out" sold $225,016 worth of tickets the first day it went on sale, breaking the record for single-ticket sales previously held by "Cats."

Weekly grosses in Boston and Hartford frequently hit the $1 million mark, putting "Movin' Out" on par with the touring productions of "Hairspray," "The Producers" and "Mamma Mia!"

So what's going on?

How is it that a show - a contemporary ballet, really - that has a challenging subject matter (Vietnam) and is not intended for children or brain-dead adults has become the surprise hit of the touring business this year?

Certainly, Billy Joel's name above the title is the big draw, and the producers have shrewdly booked the show into cities where he has a substantial fan base.

Thus the "Movin' Out" National Tour debuted in Detroit, a tough, working-class Billy Joel town if there ever was one, rather than San Francisco, which is more of an ABBA town. ("Mamma Mia!" is there now, for the third time.)

Joel has been deployed to talk up the show on the most popular classic rock stations in every city where "Movin' Out" is playing. Many of those stations are owned by Clear Channel Communications, which, as synergy would have it, is also a producer of the show.

A national television commercial, sponsored and paid for by Visa, has driven up ticket sales, too. The impact of the commercial has been so great that, according to the show's producers, there is demand for seats in cities where tickets aren't even on sale yet.

Veteran rocker Billy Joel is living proof the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, according to his fiancée Kate Lee.

The "Piano Man," 54, proposed to his 22 year-old belle in January 2004 with a 5-carat diamond, and the pair are now in the midst of planning their nuptials.

And TV correspondent Lee is certain her passion for cooking convinced the singer she was the woman for him.

She says, "He's my little guinea pig. I'm really into gourmet cooking and he's really into eating. It works out!"

We now have a mitzvah," said Billy Joel, looking around an old-fashioned Upper West Side apartment on a recent night.

It was a book party for, Walter Yetnikoff, the former head of CBS Records who managed to sign artists like Michael Jackson, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and Mr. Joel while rising early and breakfasting on cocaine and vodka.

Mr. Yetnikoff, now sober, has cleaned up pretty well. Physically, he looks as though he could go a few rounds with a baited bear.

The party was held in the apartment of Stephen Rubin, president of the Doubleday Broadway group, which published the book "Howling at the Moon: The Odyssey of a Monstrous Music Mogul in an Age of Excess."

In "Movin' Out," choreographer Twyla Tharp reconstructs the music of Billy Joel into a compelling dance-musical. Tharps sexy, uber-talented cast boogie their way through more than two dozen of Joels best known tunes, not missing a single beat. With barely a word of dialogue spoken, the actors convey their emotions only through vibrant, high-energy dance set to the backdrop of Joel's music and lyrics, as performed by a live band.

"Movin' Out" is the relatively simple yet forceful story of Brenda & Eddie, and their friends Tony, Judy, & James. These five young adults endure and savor much of what the '60s had to offer: love, sex, Vietnam, drugs, depression, and in the end, hope and happiness. When the three men go off to fight in Vietnam, all five must cope with the ramifications of war and these most turbulent of times.

Meandering through three decades of Joel's patchwork of stories in music and lyrics to weave this tale could not have been easy for Tharp. With Joel's music providing only the loose framework through hit tunes like "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" (regarding Brenda & Eddie: "They got a divorce as a matter of course, And they parted the closest of friends...") and "Goodnight Saigon" ("We came in spastic like tameless horses, We left in plastic as numbered corpses..."), Tharp invented most of what "Movin' Out" presents as the storyline. In an interview in USA Today, Joel said that Tharp's take on his songs have given him new insights into them: "It was like seeing your kid get married. All of a sudden, I was finding out different things about my children through action and movement. And I was very moved by it."

To the hardcore Billy Joel fan, the 10-piece band, rockin' some 20 or so feet above the stage, might actually be something of an initial distraction. The more fanatical one is about Joel's music, the more one might think of this as a concert. Darren Holden pounds the keys and belts out Joels lyrics with a shade more polish than the master himself. But given the need for clarity, as these lyrics are the shows only dialogue, Holden more than holds his own. With this dueling musical performance and dance-a-thon, "Movin' Out" becomes something of a tale of two shows. In a show with few weaknesses, this might be its biggest. It is challenging to pay attention to both the band and the dancers at the same time. But faced with such a tasty dilemma, its quite difficult to complain.

A warning to those aforementioned fans of Joel: Keep your eyes on the dancers, because they put on a show that's hard to believe, especially if you subscribe to common theories of physics, such as "gravity." While the talent of the band is tempting, let your ears follow the musicians and train your eyes on the powerful performances below. Holly Cruikshank as Brenda is simply remarkable in her moves. However, not to be outdone is Ron Todorowski playing Eddie. His Olympic fouettes, leaps and walkovers are nothing short of spectacular.

The raw, athletic dancing skills and overall communication prowess of all the performers in this exhibition cannot be overstated. They are able to convey emotions from all ends of the spectrum through a variety of dance moves - sometimes acrobatic, other times sensual and subtle, but always charged and communicative. The energy conveyed with every spin, twist, flip and dive is contagious. This is a different kind of Broadway show. If you thought you'd never like a musical, "Movin' Out" might just change your mind.

Alexa's in the mood for a melody, but her mom's got other ideas.

The stork has paid a visit to Elizabeth Parkinson, the sexy Tony-nominated star of "Movin' Out," and her husband, Scott Wise, a cast member who is also the show's assistant director and choreographer.

Everybody at "Movin' Out" is, of course, very happy for them - everybody, that is, but Twyla Tharp, the show's hard-driving director, choreographer and creator, who, if she'd had a shotgun handy, would have blown the stork away on its approach.

Company members say Tharp is livid that her star dancer will be out of the show for almost a year, and that Wise, the man who did the deed (lucky devil!) is bearing the brunt of her wrath.

At a recent production meeting, the cast was told that Wise will no longer be overseeing the show as assistant director and choreographer, though he is still performing in it.

Tharp is "furious with him," says one source. "She keeps saying, 'How could he let this happen?'"

I don't think I need to explain the mechanics of the birds and the bees to Twyla Tharp, but her reaction to Parkinson's pregnancy is making a lot of people involved in "Movin' Out" throw up their hands and say, "That's our Twyla!"

Tharp, they say, is a demanding perfectionist who puts the show before everything else and expects everyone around her to do the same.

She's tough on the dancers, tough on the producers ("she drives me crazy," says one, cheerfully), tough on her assistants.

She's been known to come around the theater to check up on the show and, when she is not happy about something, read the riot act to stage managers and her various assistants.