CriticalDance Forum

‘Movin’ Out’ puts Broadway spin on Billy Joel’s music

By STEVEN HYDEN
The Post-Crescent via Yahoo
April 8, 2004

Once upon a time, “Movin’ Out” was just a song off Billy Joel’s breakthrough 1977 album “The Stranger.” Now “Movin’ Out” is a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical headed Tuesday through April 18 to the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center in Appleton.

Twyla Tharp/Billy Joel show steps off Broadway and into the Benedum

By JANE VRANISH
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
April 18, 2004

Twyla Tharp has spent a lifetime movin' on, up and sideways. Perhaps it's no coincidence she designed the hit Broadway musical that took her in another direction: "Movin' Out."

"This is not your ordinary book musical," she says of the Billy Joel-inspired show that has been rockin' its Broadway house for more than a year.

It's Twyla time

Dance legend Tharp conquers Broadway, books

By Chad Jones, STAFF WRITER

TWYLA THARP is deeply tired. It's an exhaustion brought on by excessive creativity.
Within the last three years, the dance world legend has created a new kind of Broadway musical and written a practical guide to the creative process.

BRANCHIN' AND MOVIN' 0UT

James Sullivan

Although Billy Joel's father worked for the old DuMont television network, the family TV went on the fritz when he was 5. With his parents splitting up, he didn't get another set until he was in his late teens.

Tharp marches into Vietnam, in step with Billy Joel lyrics

By Georgia Rowe

TIMES CORRESPONDENT

TWYLA THARP has been on the forefront of American dance for nearly four decades. But when it came time to make her mark on Broadway, the acclaimed choreographer decided to look back to a significant era in our country's past.

Uptown girl, backstreet boy

By Karen D'Souza

Mercury News

Twyla Tharp may come off as the ultimate uptown girl.

Holding court amid the upper-crust splendor of the Ritz Carlton Hotel on Nob Hill in San Francisco, one of the reigning doyennes of modern dance peers down her nose through black-rimmed eye glasses and exudes a distinctly formidable air. She's definitely got a way about her that makes her seem like an unlikely candidate to be a die-hard Billy Joel fan.

Not the same old song and dance

MUSIC VIDEO LEAPS ONTO THE LIVE STAGE IN FRENETIC `MOVIN' OUT'

By Karen D'Souza

Mercury News

``Movin' Out'' swept into San Francisco Wednesday night, riding high atop a whole new wave of musical theater.

Like a two-hour music video made flesh, ``Movin' Out'' has little substance but soars on its visuals. Director-choreographer Tharp celebrates the sheer ecstasy of bodies in flight, sinew set afire, as an ensemble of studly boys and leggy girls dance to 24 of Joel's pop standards. There is no dialogue to get in the way of the eye-candy, no nuance to detract from the pulse-pounding score.

Not the same old song and dance

CLICHED CHOREOGRAPHY LACKS TWYLA THARP'S SIGNATURE SPARK

By Anita Amirrezvani

Mercury News

Twyla Tharp is one of the most original, inventive and delightful choreographers of our era. But after watching ``Movin' Out,'' you'd never know that. In this simplistic story, it's hard to find a scrap of original movement or a shred of sincere feeling.

Tharp is known for her ability to mix high and low art, but in ``Movin' Out,'' which she not only choreographed but also conceived and directed, it's as if she were purposely dumbing down her work.

Since ``Movin' Out'' is wordless, apart from the lyrics of the 24 Billy Joel songs to which it is set, the dancing has to carry most of the show's emotional charge, but the choreography isn't up to the task.

Dances rock in Twyla Tharp/Billy Joel 'Movin' Out.' Too bad the story trips up.

Robert Hurwitt, Chronicle Theater Critic
Friday, July 9, 2004



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The athletic leaps, twists, twirls, falls, somersaults, splits and flips are so breathtakingly exhilarating that a woman dancing an extended passage en pointe seems almost relaxing.

'Movin' Out' is a new kind of theater
By Pat Craig / CONTRA COSTA TIMES
NEW JERSEY SOUL filled San Francisco's Golden Gate Theatre Wednesday, with the opening of "Movin' Out," the surprisingly touching blend of Billy Joel songs with Twyla Tharp choreography.

Movin' Out
Is Billy Joel good enough to deserve imitation? We think not.
BY MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE


Billy Joel is perfect for Broadway: big, dumb songs about love and pain. Choreographer and director Twyla Tharp has assembled a series of weirdly literal interpretive dances set to Joel songs that almost tell a story, starting with Brenda and Eddie in high school ("Brenda and Eddie were still goin' steady/ In the summer of '75").

The soul of Joel

By Paul Liberatore
Marin Independent Journal

Marin native oversees dancers in Broadway hit 'Movin' Out' <a href=http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234~24409~2316276,00.html target=_blank>more</a>

Broadway's Richardson Joins Cast of Movin' Out, Aug. 21

By Ernio Hernandez, Playbill

Fosse Tony Award nominee Desmond Richardson joins the cast of Broadway's Movin' Out in the role of Tony, Aug. 21. <a href=http://www.playbill.com/news/article/87999.html target=_blank>more</a>