It is a little scary, says Colleen McCarty, preparing for a four-program premiere season for Moving Art: Dance Company. "When I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it, it certainly was," she laughs.

McCarty, who, with Rebecca Vie Parker was a top draw of May's first ever Cincinnati Fringe Festival, is convinced there's an audience out there for local contemporary dance. She's currently vacationing on the shore of Puget Sound getting inspired.

Moving Art will also be precedent-setting, McCarty points out, offering two-weekend runs of every program. The first will be in November at Gabriel's Corner, Over-the-Rhine.

Most dance in Cincinnati runs for two or three performances with no opportunity for word-of-mouth. "I've been frustrated with how much work people put in for one weekend," she says.

"To build artists and a company and an audience, you have to give them more than one weekend."

She'll start fund-raising when she returns to Cincinnati, figuring $5,000 will cover the bare bones to get Moving Art started.

Casting news

• Angela Gaylor returns to Broadway in December in the much-anticipated revival of La Cage aux Folles. The 2002 College-Conservatory of Music grad has snagged the ingenue role. She plays the fiancee whose homophobic parents force all manner of farcical masquerading when it's time to meet the gay family of the groom-to-be.

• Anthony Rapp, who starred in Rent on Broadway, will headline Little Shop of Horrors - along with carnivorous plant from outer space Audrey II - when it plays Cincinnati as part of Fifth Third Bank Broadway in Cincinnati April 5-17.

Star of tomorrow

Turpin High grad and back-to-back Ovation Award winner Emily Krieger has great reviews in the production of tick...tick ...BOOM at Cain Park in Cleveland.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer raved, "Emily Krieger has a mile-wide smile and a voice as sweet as it is smooth. She stops the show with a flat-out, drop-dead solo."

BOOM closes tonight, and Monday she flies to Boise and the Idaho Shakespeare Festival to star in I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change before returning to Cleveland for her senior year at Baldwin-Wallace College.

'Wonder' benefit

Know Theatre Tribe has a benefit performance of the delightfully wacky Wonder of the World, 8 p.m. tonight at Gabriel's Corner. Some proceeds will benefit Greater Cincinnati Community Shares, whose members include ReSTOC, Planned Parenthood, Civic Garden Center, Drop Inn Center and Know Tribe.

For reservations and information, call Know at 300-5669.

Backstage stuff

Cincinnati Arts Association wraps up its online auction on Friday. "Backstage Treasures" include a champagne evening at Chicago, autographed faux fur throws and vacation packages. All proceeds benefit the association's arts education programs, which serve more than 100,000 students in Greater Cincinnati every year with artist residencies, ticket and transportation subsidies and scholarships.

To bid, visit www.CincinnatiArts .org and click the Backstage Treasures banner.

Hank Williams tribute

Adale O'Brien is a favorite of Playhouse in the Park audiences for her warm and heartfelt performances in shows that include Appalachian Strings and Always ...Patsy Cline.

She opens Tuesday at Actors Theatre of Louisville in Hank Williams: Lost Highway, a musical bio of the country music legend. O'Brien plays Mama Lilly, who raised her boy on the Lord and bought him his first guitar.

Lost Highway continues through Sept. 11. Next Sunday there will be a conversation with the artists following the matinee. For reservations and information, call the box office at (502) 584-1205 or visit www.ActorsTheatre.org.

E-mail jdemaline@enquirer.com