"Movin' Out" isn't a musical in the traditional sense of the term, because there's no dialog. It's not modern dance, because its movements are more balletic...and yet it's not ballet either, but something a bit more. Though the production builds a show around existing songs, it's not like "Mamma Mia!," which at least includes a script and dialog, however thin and inane.

"Movin' Out" is more a dance play, though Tharp and Joel prefer to call it simply "a show" and leave additional descriptions to the audience.

A plot does exist. Sort of. We do get to know some characters. Kind of. The story flows. A bit. The program even contains the briefest of plot summaries.

But you could eliminate all these elements and just have a bang-up good evening of music and high-powered dancing.

What little plot exists deals with a group of six high school friends, and follows them from their senior prom until many years later in their lives. The saga covers loves lost and found, as well as sex, drugs and rock and roll. The guys go off to fight in Vietnam; one of them is killed. Those who come home have a difficult time adjusting, but ultimately it all ends happily at a high school reunion, with rekindled hope, love and friendship.

I think.

As I said, who needs a plot with Tharp's incredible choreography?

The massive yet minimal set by Santo Loquasto puts the "Piano Man" at the top back of the stage, along with a 10-piece band, while the action takes place below on the stage floor. Donald Holder's lighting design plays a major role in creating mood and putting on a spectacular show of shadows and flash.

Some of the principals are double-cast and alternate performances (not surprising, considering the show's high energy). During Wednesday's opening night performance, Matt Wilson played the "Piano Man," whose keyboard skill and singing drives the story line.

The role of Eddie was danced by Ron Todorowski; Brenda was Laurie Kanyok; Tony was Corbin Popp; Judy was Julieta Gros; James was Matthew Dibble; and Sergeant O'Leary was John Carroll. The roles of Eddie, Brenda and Tony - along with the "Piano Man" - alternate from show to show.

The dancing is amazingly athletic. Anyone who watches these men with their bulging biceps and washboard abs doing high kicks and leaps - and carrying women over their heads for two hours - should hesitate before thinking of dancers as effeminate.

While the choreography is dazzling, these performers also are good actors, able to convey emotions with facial expressions and body movement. Gros, for example, is heartbreaking as the young widow accepting the flag from her husband's coffin.

Todorowski, as an alienated youth, is outstanding.

Kanyok's as Brenda goes through the most visible transition from prom queen to flirtatious "Uptown Girl," to the more mature woman at the end of the story. Kanyok's hairdresser also gets special marks for the quick change in look: something that can't possibly be a wig, given the beating it takes in the dances!

Numerous scenes are memorable, such as a battle sequence where gunfire is effectively simulated with drum and light flashes; and the drug interludes, always in red tones.

Billy Joel fans may want to hum along with the familiar tunes, but restrain yourself and concentrate on the visual spectacle. You won't be disappointed.

"The Stranger." Accepting guidance from the album's title track, the song ostensibly revolves around identity issues and masks and shit. I'm the stranger. You're the stranger. Love and times are tough. Ad infinitum. Okay, so it's only five minutes.

"Scenes From An Italian Restaurant." I actually like this song. But only for one (dare I say) couplet near the end. The drama unfolds as follows: Brenda and Eddie. Love and times are tough (again). Things don't work out. Back to the old neighborhood. What then? You may ask. The song's narrator pleads ignorance: "That's all I heard about Brenda and Eddie/Can't tell you more than I told you already." And that takes more than seven minutes.

"Only The Good Die Young." A romanticized notion, indeed, but more manageable as it wastes less than four minutes. Sinners are fun. Saints aren't. Live fast, little Virginia, despite the protests of your mother and your fellow Catholic schoolgirl pals. Carpe diem and all that shit.

"Just The Way You Are/She's Always A Woman." Essentially the same song, thus it adheres to the four-song limitation. So it stands to reason, if the songs are one that a single rendering should suit: Woman, protean thing that she is, makes a mockery of the singer and his platitudinous understanding of love. Yet he would have it no other way. Fool for love and shit.

There you have it, folks: "The Stranger" in four songs. Of course, Joel goes on to marry Christie Brinkley. And divorce her. Luckily, there's a new 23 year-old bride (roughly the age of his daughter for those keeping score at home). Love, indeed, must be tough. But I knew that. After all, I listened to "The Stranger." And my floors are as clean as they've been in weeks.

"Movin' Out" is a musical unlike any other show. Taking out the dialogue, an element some may think is essential to a musical, a story of five friends growing up together is told solely through dance choreography and Billy Joel songs.

Twenty-four of Billy Joel's greatest hits are interpreted through movement to create a story of love and ultimately freedom in a creative and interesting way. The highly talented Matt Wilson sings as well as plays the piano. Wilson wailed on the piano and oozed star appeal, sounding like a mix between Joel and Elton John.

Fans of the movie "Center Stage" will absolutely fall in love with "Movin' Out." There's nothing like seeing the amazing dancers live, and with a full rock band performing all the songs live, the show feels like the perfect mix of musical, rock concert and dance performance.

The industrial, urban-looking set is a nice complement to the high-energy show. The eight piece band plays on a raised platform high above the stage, while the dancers perform below.

The eccentric light shows give the feel of a rock concert, but the dance movements, sometimes soft and delicate, sometimes wild and thrashing, take audiences back to that musical world.

Some people may have a hard time following the character's storylines, for you must really focus on the lyrics and movements to understand, but the unbelievable dance sequences can always be appreciated.

Playing the role of Brenda, Laurie Kanyok is constantly thrown around. Whether it be swung in circles by her partner, or thrown into the air and flung across the floor, it is mind-boggling how she can maintain her composure and complete her dance steps after such wild rides.

The most impressive was the male lead Eddie, played amazingly by Ron Todorowski. While leaping high, Todorowski also managed to accomplish back flips and many other contorted gymnastic movements. He is the best dancer I have ever seen perform live.

The dancers seem to perform these highly challenging movements so effortlessly. It was truly a sight to see.

Ballet is the dance style that is woven through all of the pieces, and after reading the program it's clear to see why, as almost every dancer has been classically trained.

There are also high mixtures of thrash jazz, classic jazz and modern styles. "Movin' Out" received two Tony awards after its premiere on Broadway, and it's something spectacular that can not be missed.

"My little company was actually the last performing group at the World Trade Center," she says. "We had a sense of what it meant to be between those two towers. A few days later, I saw the second one go down."

In that instant, the world changed. "In one sense, it didn't really impact 'Movin' Out,'" Ms. Tharp says, "but I think 'Movin' Out' acted as a kind of gauge: It's been a constant since it opened, but the world around it has been changing radically."

Through it all, Ms. Tharp's focus has been on the plight of returning soldiers.

"I feel that the Vietnam vets have been a very brave lot," she says. "The theme of the piece is ultimately beyond our immediate time. It's the notion of return. Any warrior coming back to his home is going to have a mountain to hike.

"The thing I know is that these guys were drafted and when they came back they were treated as if they were mercenaries. There has never been, as far as I know, any time in history - Huns, Romans, Goths, I don't care who - where men have been drafted and then the culture has turned around and treated them that way."

Ms. Tharp found Mr. Joel's songs a guiding force in structuring her work. When she approached him about using his music for a show that would have no dialogue except the lyrics of his songs, she took Homer's opening line in "The Iliad" and updated it.

"Sing to me, Muse, of the rage of Achilles" morphed into "Sing to me, Billy, of the rage of a generation of Long Island men" - the protagonists of "Movin' Out."

"The verities of human nature are such that war is fought and men have to come back and try to deal with being civilians again," Ms. Tharp says, "and what does that mean after you're trained to be a killer? That's the reality, isn't it?

"There's a section in the second act with the song Billy wrote specifically about the vets called 'Goodnight Saigon,' and it's a nightmare projection of the principal character recalling one of these hellish war scenes. And you can feel the men in the audience - you can feel them - sometimes they're sobbing; everybody is just torn up."

For her illuminating look at their war - and for her entire body of work - Ms. Tharp received the President's Award from the Vietnam Veterans of America this year. "I know from speeches at the award ceremony that they see themselves as unfortunate forerunners of the soldiers in Iraq," she says. "Some of today's soldiers are in the reserves, which is different from the draft, but in any case, if you're missing a limb, you're missing a limb."

Ms. Tharp says she doesn't have any illusions that "Movin' Out" can provide some grand healing for veterans, but "at least we can in community - which is what theater is - acknowledge that these guys have been through this experience."

"Movin' Out" may be an unorthodox Veterans Day tribute, but, in its own way, it may well be the most revealing.

"Movin' Out" is not especially profound or any of those other pretentious adjectives. Some might argue that since there's barely a word of dialogue in its entire two hours, it's not really even a musical. Yet Tharp, a choreographer of legendary inventiveness who conceived the show, achieves a remarkable kind of fusion here, shaping songs Joel wrote over several decades into an astonishingly accessible movement-driven piece about Vietnam-era anguish and post-Vietnam angst.

Many of Joel's greatest hits, from the 1970s to the 1990s, are incorporated into "Movin' Out," from "Captain Jack" to "She's Got A Way" to "We Didn't Start The Fire." (Several of his neoclassical compositions are woven in as well, but let's face it, they're not what most of the singer's fans are coming to hear.) Most of the numbers are performed live by a singer (à la Joel himself) at a piano, perched with the rest of a 10-piece band above the stage. The lead vocalist, Darren Holden, is a superb stand-in for the songwriter; his renditions of "Uptown Girl" and "An Innocent Man," among others, outdo the original recordings.

Underneath the musicians' narrow platform - on Broadway this is on hydraulics and in constant motion; here it's stationary - a corps of more than two dozen dances the intertwining stories of a group of Long Island teenagers coming of age in the 1960s. The song essentially framing the evening is the nostalgic "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant," detailing the breakup of Brenda (a breathtaking Holly Cruikshank) and Eddie (the dazzlingly acrobatic Ron Todorowski), who, Joel tells us, were the widely envied "king and queen of the prom."

Joel did not compose with a musical in mind, and few of his titles qualify as theatre songs, the kind of music that is specific to a character or propels the narrative. "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant," in fact, is one of only two songs out of the 30 in "Movin' Out" that satisfy the requirements of conventional musical theatre. The other, "Goodnight Saigon," musicalizes the show's climax, a sort of mesmerizing, post-traumatic-stress ballet.

Lacking a deep pool of "story" songs, Tharp does the next best thing, using Joel's music to heighten mood and underline the emotion in the convulsing events the show chronicles. At the top of the evening, she introduces all of the major characters in a rousing "It's Still Rock and Roll To Me." In addition to Brenda and Eddie, there are working-class Eddie's best buds, Tony (David Gomez) and James (Matthew Dibble), as well as the vivacious Judy (Julieta Gros), whose fate is to be a war widow at a tragically tender age.

Like so many Vietnam dramatizations, from "The Deer Hunter" to "Born On The Fourth of July," "Movin' Out" tracks the loss of innocence in an emerging American generation. Tony, now hooked up with Brenda, heads for the battlefields of Southeast Asia along with Eddie and James. (There's even a "Platoon"-style combat sequence, with Todorowski offering the wrenching portrait of a soldier gone mad.) Much of the rest of the show charts the aftereffects of the friends' tours of duty, a military adventure that ends in disaster of one sort or another for each of them.

It's no surprise that much of the show follows their downward spiral back in the States. The world of Joel's music is not a particularly happy place. Songs like "Prelude/Angry Young Man," "Big Shot" and "Pressure" reflect a turbulent soul. The music is rueful, dejected, often outraged. Redundancy was perhaps unavoidable; more jarringly, though, some songs make only marginal contextual sense. Gros' Judy, for instance, dances her grief at her husband's death to "The Stranger," a rather enigmatic choice for a moment of such visceral emotion.

Still, the exhilarating creativity of "Movin' Out" flies at you in continuous streaks: the quicksilver sexual pulse of "Uptown Girl" (with the leggy Cruikshank in a killer red dress, thanks to costume designer Suzy Benzinger); the kinky sleaze of the leather-bar "Captain Jack"; the sultry pas de deux of Gomez and Cruikshank in "Shameless"; Todorowski's eye-popping gymnastics in the show's uplifting final movement. At all times, Donald Holder's lighting bathes the stage in a hot glow, of the glamorous sort you get in well-produced rock concerts.

This touring version still feels fresh; the lead dancers perform only four times a week - they alternate with another group of principals - and they radiate the hallmark qualities of "Movin' Out," passion and athleticism. Who, you wonder, could be immune to the magnetism of all this youth and spirit, an energy that the production seems happy to share. Your own footwork may not be as fancy as that of Tharp's crew. But one thing you can count on: As you leave the theater, your step will certainly be lighter.