Photo By Joan Marcus

Brendan King likens the athletic demands of dancing in Movin' Out to playing a full game of football -- jumping, tumbling and turning.

For Brendan King, the biggest challenge he faces on a regular basis is purely physical. As a lead dancer in Billy Joel and Twyla Tharp's Movin' Out, which opens at the Aronoff Center on Tuesday, King knows that staying in shape is the key to staying at the top of his game.

"It's like a full football game," King says, "jumping, tumbling, turning. It all meshes. Twyla Tharp is the most athletic choreographer I've ever worked with."

And he should know. Raised in New Jersey, King's mother owns a dance studio and started him on his feet at an early age. Initially, he went to Rutgers on a track and field scholarship and studied biology, but he missed dance and performing. So he left school and got a gig on Broadway.

Instead of seeing him at the lab, audiences will have the chance to watch King's athleticism in Movin' Out, a dialogue-less story told through Joel's music and Tharp's choreography. King was part of the show's Broadway company before landing the tour.

Movin' Out follows five friends through two decades. Loosely divided into three eras -- post-WWII idealism, the Vietnam War and subsequent period of unrest, and "survival" -- the characters Tharp has constructed come straight from Joel's lyrics. Brenda and Eddie surface from "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant"; Tony is created from "Movin' Out"; James from "James"; and Judy from "Why, Judy, Why."

King's character, Eddie, goes on one of the most difficult journeys of any character in the piece. "Eddie is the typical Long Island guy who never wants to leave his high school mentality behind," King states. "One by one, his friends move on. James gets engaged, Tony goes into the service ... they all get pulled into Vietnam." Following tragedy in Vietnam, Eddie spirals downward, deals with posttraumatic stress disorder and ultimately goes through a big transformation.

"He comes full circle and realizes that he has to grow up," King says. "Life needs to go on."

Although the dancers don't sing, the show provides quite a vocal workout for the piano man. Darren Holden and Matt Wilson alternate performances playing the piano and singing lead vocals on the 24-plus Billy Joel tunes that make up the center of the performance.

It's a project to which songwriter Joel was happy to give his blessing. He knew his Pop songs were stories, but he never expected that those stories would one day be woven together into a larger composition. According to Joel, artists had approached him in the past to turn his songs into a show, but he never liked the idea. Then he met Twyla Tharp.

Tharp formed her own dance company in 1965, and created her own choreographic style, citing George Balanchine, Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham among her influences. She mixed classical and casual styles, putting dancers in tennis shoes and integrating walking and running into more traditional ballet sequences.

Tharp's interest in Pop music isn't limited to Billy Joel's work. In 1973, she choreographed a ballet, "Deuce Coupe," to Beach Boys tunes. But she had been using Joel's music in her studio for years when her son suggested she turn his music into a movement piece. Tharp was intrigued by the idea and set to work, recruiting six dancers and choreographing a handful of Joel's songs.

Lest potential audience members be scared off by the atypical format, rest assured: Tharp has worked long and hard with her dancers to make sure they are just as adept at acting their roles as they are at dancing their steps.

King describes Tharp's training as "intense. We worked with Twyla," he explains, "and had to learn first how to give actions without dance. We had to use our faces and bodies to portray emotions." Tharp doesn't tour with the Movin' Out company, but she does occasionally check in and give notes to the dancers. "We get more facial expression corrections than dance corrections," King laughs.

Tharp also made sure that her dancers understood the historical contexts of the piece. They studied and discussed events in Vietnam and created in-depth histories for their characters. For Tharp, the process of creating a character -- even one who doesn't speak -- is just as valuable as the choreography itself. And that concept is what sets Movin' Out apart from other shows -- it's not quite a musical, and it's not quite a ballet. It takes the best elements of each and blends them.

Despite the physical challenges, King isn't ready to move on or move out. "I've been with Movin' Out for a-year-and-a-half," he says. "There's still another one-and-a-half to two years for the tour. We just signed new contracts. It's a great job that will be very hard to leave."

It's also a job that has taught him a lot. "I've learned to match dancing with acting, and the importance of the face," King explains. "If you're not using your face, it's not believable. I never realized how important that was."

Ultimately, King believes audiences will enjoy the show, despite its unorthodox format. "It's a talented cast," he says. "I've never (been a part of) so much energy on one stage before." He also offers this tip to audience members: "If you listen before the show starts, you'll hear us behind the curtain, getting geared up ... we go crazy."

He stops for a moment. "It will definitely be an enjoyable show."