His face shining with excitement and conviction, Tome (toe-may) Cousin practically bounces up and down in the restaurant booth, his hands whirring through the air while his words tumble out like a litter of puppies.

		'Contact' Where: Playhouse Conservatory Company (Point Park students) at the Playhouse, 222 Craft Ave., Oakland. When: Through March 5; Wed.-Sat. 8 p.m.; Sun. 2 p.m. Tickets: $12-$14; 412-621-4445.

I can hardly keep up, trying to capture the details but more mesmerized by the tumultuous sense of creativity, discovery and growth. What I need isn't words of description or narration so much as a notation of the physical manifestation of spirit.

Why not? Tome is a dancer, and it is his whole being that is stirred, expressing not only the growth of three dozen students but his own transforming sense of vocation. Tome is also a choreographer and, as his guest residency back at his alma mater, Point Park University, has made clear, a teacher.

His assignment seemed simple enough, to direct a student production of "Contact," the Tony Award-winning dance musical (dancical?), which he performed in and helped to develop as part of the original Lincoln Center ensemble, both off-Broadway and on, from 1999-2002.

But there had never been a student production before -- there had never been any production except the original, two national tours and London. Tome had to pioneer a way to do the show with students and, in the process, bridge the gap between Point Park's separate dance and theater programs, and even between the acting and musical theater specialties.

So the assignment wasn't simple after all. And when he came to town in November with his assistant, Leeanna Smith, Tome was overwhelmed: 270 students auditioned, from all three programs, a sea of talent seeking expression.

They didn't know what they were in for. "Contact" is really three separate stories, "Swing," "Did You Move?" and "Contact," all about different ways to pursue love. Alone among prize-winning musicals, its credits list no composer or lyricist, just a book writer, John Weidman. The music is recorded, drawn from Rodgers and Hart and Tchaikovsky, Benny Goodman and the Squirrel Nut Zippers. No one sings, and there's only limited dialogue. Mainly, they dance.

So the creator of "Contact" is really the choreographer, Susan Stroman. And it was she who chose Tome to oversee this first post-Broadway/tour edition, as well as the first regional professional production, coming up at the Virginia Stage Company in Norfolk, where he'll be mounting "Contact" two weeks after he leaves Pittsburgh.

Stroman's blessing is important to Tome. He says she instinctively knew he had a vocation for teaching. But to get going, he had to design an audition and rehearsal process that was developmental in itself, something like a specialized boot camp within the university.

And he hadn't realized how much the Point Park performance programs have grown since he graduated in 1982. There is so much talent that many students get little chance to perform on the main stage. So he has cast each of the three stories separately, creating in effect three companies, plus double casting some roles, allowing him to use 37 performers where Broadway used 19.

And he turned the mass November audition into a week-long master class, "taking as many students as possible along for the ride as far as we could," exploring which of the dancers could act and which actors could dance, gradually whittling 270 down to 37. Then he returned Jan. 5 for an intensive week of rehearsal, a week before winter classes began. Then five more weeks.

The result met its first audience last night, but a couple of days ago, Tome said it had already exceeded his expectations -- "set, tech, performance, all of it, the sheer look of it." When he first saw them a couple of nights ago in their costumes and haircuts, he didn't even know them. Nor will other students: "They won't recognize their friends." And he long ago forgot which were the actors, which the dancers.

To hear (and watch and feel) him tell it, "Contact" could have been developed just for this, to train a heterogeneous group of performers, letting them discover their potential and learn the real ways of the performing world.

"What they aren't prepared for is the let-down," he says of the students. "They've bonded so tightly. The majority are sophomores, and I think they're going to be so spoiled -- the level they've risen to and what they expect."

He doesn't think the Point Park faculty were prepared for "the intensity with which I attack this," either. And he's extended the training beyond the rehearsal studio, taking his performers out for lectures and demonstrations in the community, making even the dancers speak -- as he and the other dancers did in New York, where usually dancers are seen but not heard.

He's tried to provide the whole professional experience, teaching students how to be swings and how to keep a swing book: "They'd never even heard of the concept."

In all this, he drew on a wide circle of collaborators, starting with his assistant, Smith, a swing in the Broadway cast but also a member of the national tour, so she knew both the original thrust stage version and the proscenium tour. Danny Herman helped out, another Playhouse veteran who was a swing on Broadway -- and it is swings, who have to be ready to step into many different roles, who best know the choreography -- and Rocker Verastique, another Point Park grad from the original New York company.

That's just the start. Another Point Park grad, Colleen Dunn, one of the Girls in the Yellow Dress on Broadway, had been coming here to help when she broke her arm and couldn't travel. So she started e-mailing the three students playing her role. Then Boyd Gaines, a Tony-winner as Michael Wylie, a central character, started doing the same, as did Karen Ziemba, another Tony-winner as the wife; then other members of the original cast; then the original stage manager and others on the technical side, all e-mailing back and forth, creating a huge network of mentors and proteges.

"And these were lengthy e-mails," Tome says with happy amazement. He attributes it to the original company's "family feeling." He says show business is hard, but the people are usually good. "And they know I love to teach, so I'm the perfect person to be doing this."

The roles are a great leap for the students. "Contact" was distinctive on Broadway for using dancers with character, clearly aged 35 and up. At Point Park, they're all 19 or thereabouts: "They've probably never been to a bar in their lives."

He's especially pleased to have re-created the feel of the original production. On tour, he says, it got "flattened out," partly because it had to play in such large halls. "You didn't notice the women enough. But each woman has her own story. I went back and looked at it from each character's point of view."

The result is "deceivingly big, there's so much going on acting-wise. It's a show you should see more than once."

The pro production he stages in Norfolk will have a cast pieced together from the four previous professional productions. But as "Contact" gets done around the country, he points out that these Point Park students "are now on the short list of those who know the show. So I tell them they have options."

On the other hand, they always did. Tome recalls those November auditions and the energy of the students. "If I had that much confidence when I was that age, I'd be a huge star!"

In a sense, he is.