FINE-TUNING HIS ‘ONE AND ONLY’ ROLE

At last, Tommy Tune is back.

Sporting a gray raw-silk suit, white sandals and a dangling “lucky tap” around his neck, the tanned and elegant Tune, 46, glided into a suite at the Beverly Wilshire, settling his long (6 foot 6) frame onto a plush sofa. The Tony-winning Gershwin musical “My One and Only” (in which he and co-star Sandy Duncan open at the Ahmanson Friday) has been touring since March, yet he showed no signs of physical or emotional fatigue.

“See, the thing they never taught us in school,” he began in his soft Texas drawl, “was that maintenance part of a performance. I’m nearing my thousandth performance in this show, and I’ve had to invent a whole rigmarole of games so that it stays fresh and fun--for me . So some nights I just go and warn people: I say, ‘Everything’s gonna be different tonight.’ That doesn’t mean I’m gonna change a line or a bit of blocking, but that everything I say is gonna be turned upside down.”

He took an appreciative breath. “Sandy is great at that: She loves it, is much better at it than I am. Sometimes I’m so taken in that I think she’s forgotten her line--but no, she’s just taking the pause in a different place to make the point fresh--and to make me listen. Then I come up with something, and we bounce the ball back and forth.

“But the best way to get ready is in the thought processes you’ve allowed yourself to dip into during that day. So I go to a museum, have a meeting with some remarkable people. Sometimes it’s a small thing: the waiter serving you potatoes and green beans, but doin’ it the French way, holding those two things--and it’s just so right.”

That capacity for pleasure is easily evident in Tune’s work and in person, though he acknowledged that worry is a frequent companion. “And it’s the stupidest thing in the world! I hate myself when I do it.”

Still, sometimes even the best intentions get obscured--as during the original 1983 staging of “My One and Only,” when he found himself unhappily taking over the directorial reins from Peter Sellars.

“That was an especially difficult birth,” he acknowledged. “You see, I was purposely not going to direct: I wanted to perform again. It was time; I’d turned down several shows to be a director, and I thought that, for my own growth, I had to perform again, get back to that other feeling. . . . “

Tune’s affinity for dance began early: growing up in Houston (he and Sandy Duncan lived just a few miles apart and danced together as children), Broadway chorus parts, film roles (“Hello, Dolly!” and “The Boyfriend”), then multiple Tonys for “Seesaw,” “A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine,” “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” “Nine” and “My One and Only” (best actor, best choreography).

“I was born to dance,” he said firmly (although admitting that his height is often encumbering). “Maybe He just gave me more to dance with. And I am proportioned, so that’s a gift. But I’m glad it looks easy--even if it isn’t. That’s nobody’s problem but my own.”

While the height may have presented a small disability, Tune made up for it in discipline: “I was a real good chorus dancer ‘cause they didn’t have to tell me anything twice; I would take a correction and go with it. The other thing that got me out of the chorus was that I’d learn my part, then go home and choreograph my own version. The next step was summer stock, where I really learned to choreograph. You do a show every week, so you’ve got to come up with the goods.”

On directing vs. choreography:

“I think directing is interpretive. You’re given the playwright’s words, then you interpret them, bring them to life onstage--and perhaps in doing that, bring something of your own to the work. But choreography is creative . There are some bodies and music--and you have to express an idea, create in the air. Choreography is moving sculpture. The emotional thread is the playwright’s, but the ‘words’ aren’t written down; you have to help the dancers create them.

“So choreography is abstract. But a director deals with emotion and intellect. You have to get smart and figure out what the true intentions of the scene are, how to orchestrate that to get to the feeling , which is the most important thing.”

The appeal of “Only,” Tune concluded, “is in many things: the color, the Gershwin music, the tap dancing--and something I always try to watch for as I’m creating a show--I plug my ears, pretend I’m a deaf person and just watch it: ‘Could I follow the story, would it be clear?’ Then I close my eyes and feel it as a blind person: ‘Will the words and music take me through, would I get the story that way?’

“I have to have a feeling for what I involve myself with, definitely,” he added. “So, yes, I’m offered a lot of films to direct (such as “Footloose”). But at this point, it has to be something that calls to me, that I can identify with in some way. And overall, I’ve been very lucky about the pieces that have come to me.”

Especially considering his goals.

“I came to New York with a dream,” he said simply: “to dance in the chorus of a Broadway show. That was the whole thing. Now mind you, that was very hard to realize. I auditioned a lot and got a lot of rejection: 6 foot 6, 150 pounds, trying to dance in the chorus of a Broadway show--that’s a very odd dream. But it was mine. Anyway, when that happened, then all that other stuff came--well, those things were wonderful, and I’m grateful. But I swear to you, the dream was to dance in the chorus.”