Although Broadway dance diva Ann Reinking is well known for her ultra-long legs, she's infinitely more petite in person. But the authoritative voice is still husky to the core and deeply friendly.

Known as Annie to her friends, Reinking attended a special workshop at Point Park's new dance complex last weekend, taking a few minutes to reminisce about her storied career.

Reinking ruled the dance roost on Broadway for many years during the '70s and '80s. Those in the know looked for her next role, and they always delivered -- from chorus parts in "Cabaret" and "Pippin" to her eye-catching jitterbug in "Over Here!," a tribute to the Andrews Sisters, and starring roles in "A Chorus Line," "Chicago" (twice), "Dancin' " and "Sweet Charity."

Film buffs may remember Reinking in "All That Jazz," "Annie" and "Micki and Maude," but Broadway remained her first love. She returned to stage "Fosse," a choreographic salute to Bob Fosse, her mentor on stage and paramour offstage.

At Point Park she touched on her early days dancing in "Pippin," where "we weren't window dressing." But mostly she talked about Fosse's place in the lexicon of musical vaudeville, particularly "Chicago," where pace and timing ruled.

"Roxie is a little hellion," she said. "You like her but you don't know why you like her. You're so much trouble, but you're adorable." But her favorite role remained Charity Hope Valentine, "Sweet Charity" to the rest of us. As Reinking said, "It really tests your mettle -- you really have to sing, you really have to be funny, you really have to cry, you really have to dance -- it runs the whole gamut."

These days Reinking is a teacher at heart. What she learned from Fosse is that musical theater "is a craft and that you can learn a craft and keep working and become a master craftsman."

She tried to pass that on to her young dancers, not necessarily the Fosse style, but what surprisingly seemed to be the techniques of burping and screaming. It was part of a workshop involving 40 dance and theater majors, where the students were learning a work-in-progress inspired by the piano.

It was really all about comic timing, an oft-neglected aspect of dance theater training. Reinking was approaching "freedom of spirit" with the students. "We're having fun with music and character and comedy, a smattering of things to build performance skills," she explained.

The workshop with dance and theater students was the result of an extended professional relationship with Point Park visiting artist, pianist Jeff Saver, who had known Reinking since their "Chicago" days together.

Inspired by studio class pieces and the black-and-white physicality of the piano itself, the pair decided to shape a piece. He offered the phrasing and transitions. She offered the dance response.

It's an untitled work where Reinking doesn't want the students "to do a lot of tricks, set their hair on fire." She wants a technique that doesn't involve kicking "up to the ceiling and splits, turns, jumps, jumps. The technique might be serving them but not the material."

It's all about the material and, along that vein, Reinking is looking forward to "The Visit," being revived with the ageless Broadway legend Chita Rivera (75 years young) playing opposite the relatively youthful George Hearn (73) at Washington, D.C.'s,, Signature Theater in the midst of a Kander & Ebb celebration (www.sigonline.org).

After all, there's a one-legged tango to be addressed, although Rivera can probably still kick up to the ceiling.