ny city center encores!

But it’s the ministrations of choreographer Jones (of Holiday Inn and Honeymoon in Vegas) that most delight the crowd. Let us add that two hapless Local 802 members are pulled from their saxophones and forced downstage in Tyrolean hats to play ocarinas, and I can’t imagine that the lowly mouth organ has ever received such repeated roars from the house on every blessed note.

Denis Jones' choreography, spoofing everything from ballroom dancing to old-world European folk dances, is consistently inventive

Though I know de Mille choreographed the 1951 version, I hardly remember it dance for dance, step for step. So I can’t comment on whether Denis Jones keeps track of whatever is recorded or recalled of her work. I can say he’s done well with several numbers in which the men show their prowess and the dance hall girls, arriving in act two, throw a mean can-can. Indeed, when the men join the women for the can-can, Jones turns that into something suddenly and surprisingly rousing. He also does nicely by a pas de deux Kevin Munhall and Darien Crago execute during a musical break in the plaintive “Another Autumn.”

And Denis Jones’ choreography, including a terrific can-can led by Jenny Laroche, who’s a Rockette, is unusually strong throughout.

Agnes de Mille, who choreographed the original production, certainly knew how to make macho men move, and Denis Jones does a creditable job of designing dances along the de Mille lines. When that stagecoach arrives and the women spill out, there’s an even more jubilant jamboree as they have no trouble finding willing partners.