The Choreography of Tony Nominees A scene from "Newsies," choreographed by Christopher Gattelli. To see how hard it is to judge choreography in musicals, you need only watch all four of this year's Tony nominees. What criteria are involved? In ballet and modern dance, choreography is the shaping factor, the ingredient that brings music, subject matter and performance together into a whole; in a musical, that's seldom so. But the great choreographers are great directors too: inventors of their own genres of theater. Tony Awards A special section with slide shows, the list of nominations, a Tonys archive and more. Matthew Broderick, as Jimmy Winter, being passed along like a package in the Gershwin-derived "Nice Work if You Can Get It," directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall. Elena Roger and Ricky Martin tango in "Evita," choreographed by Rob Ashford and directed by Michael Grandage. Paradoxically, some of the most eminent choreographers - from George Balanchine to Matthew Bourne - have also been happy to work with directors in musicals, and have learned new skills by doing so. Jerome Robbins is the most famous of those who worked on Broadway as a director-choreographer. There is no single method for choreography to succeed in a musical: It may be a source of isolated highlights or a unifying thread. Don't many people go to musicals principally for their high energy? In that respect, none of the current crop deliver as well as the choreographer Christopher Gattelli does in "Newsies." Energy is crucial to the story; the dances keep bursting with the explosive jumps performed by a large ensemble. Others look primarily for a certain inventive wit. Only in Kathleen Marshall's dances for the Gershwin musical "Nice Work if You Can Get It" is wit even sporadically evident this year. The way a line of women pass Matthew Broderick along like a parcel is just one image that raises a smile; there are a few others. It's also natural to look for stylistic originality. Here the prize surely goes to Steven Hoggett for "Once," even though this production has less choreography than any other of this year's Tony nominees. And the originality of Mr. Hoggett's contribution lies not in his dances, but in the way group gestures occasionally take the show into an enlarged, surreal dimension. Really, the story of "Once" ought to appear corny: It's the old "Will this provincial boy with a dream make it to the big lights of New York?" But the emphasis on the realities and impact of making music renders "Once" the freshest show of the group. A more potent aspect of choreography , though, can beam forth when dance and movement are indivisible from direction, and where they seem constantly to give a show further dimension. I find most of Andrew Lloyd Webber's music and Tim Rice's lyrics for "Evita" banal (why does Evita think Argentina might cry for her, anyway?). Yet Rob Ashford's dances and the physical aspects of Michael Grandage's direction make the whole show suspenseful, fleshing out aspects of society and politics beyond the words and music. Though the choreography and direction of "Evita" are by different artists, you can't tell where one stops and the other starts. In "Nice Work," they are by the same person, and yet they fall into quite separate categories. The dominant dance idiom of "Nice Work" is the Charleston, of "Evita" the tango. Purists of the genres should avoid these shows, but Mr. Ashford's tangos have a stylishness and dramatic thrust of their own, whereas Ms. Marshall's Charlestons and other 1920s dances feel, despite their occasional moments of wit, like just so much costume jewelry, brought out to make a general impression but not worn with any real belief. The same is true for "Newsies": Mr. Gattelli's numbers look formulaic. And I don't find that "Nice Work" has enough faith in its own classic Gershwin songs; certainly the dances don't lodge any of them deeper under my skin. "Leap of Faith," a show that has already closed, had weaker ingredients than any of the above. Thanks to the choreographer Sergio Trujillo, however, its virtues included a few moments of complex dance meter - notably, when two groups worked in counter-rhythm - that were more engaging than anything in "Newsies" or "Nice Work." Those moments, in turn, pale beside a number in "Evita" in which a large ensemble breaks into three groups, each putting strong material over at the same time, or another number showcasing skillful geometrical changes. The image that stays most in my mind, nonetheless, is much simpler. It is from "Once," and it is a nice example of dance sitting down (which ought not to work for those of us who are devotees of footwork). A song is being sung in an office. Suddenly clerks at their desks outside simply wave their arms upward, as if under the spell of the music, and as if the wave flowed up from their guts. It makes no realistic sense, but it says everything about the way music gets under our skin, and how this music will infect others who have not yet heard it. If we say that a choreographer is a dance maker, then Mr. Hoggett is the least remarkable of those on Broadway this year. He gives us no big number, no steps to lodge in our heads or patterns that we can admire. He certainly supplies energy, but not shaped with any great sophistication or complexity. Yet "Once," the most truly musical of these shows because of its focus on music making, has moments like these when its movement seems neurological: when it makes us feel how helpless we are under music's spell.