Ballroom dancers are transported from competition into a theatrical context for "Burn the Floor," which taps into the popularity of TV's "Dancing With the Stars." Photos by Ronda Churchill. Much of the choreography comes from Jason Gilkison's sexier spinoff "FloorPlay." "Burn the Floor" at Luxor capitalizes on the popularity of ballroom dancing.

Some performers find Las Vegas audiences a tough crowd: Sleepy. Distracted. Tipsy. But that's nothing for the dancers in "Burn the Floor."

You see, most of the fleet-footed stars of the Latin and ballroom dance revue were plucked from the world of competitive dancing. And when you get to the finals, "a lot of your audience is the competitors that you've beaten. They're all watching you with prying eyes," says Damon Sugden, one of the 18 dancers in the new revue at Luxor.

"When you come here and audiences come to see you and appreciate what you're doing, it's just a total feeling of elation," he says. "A lot of stress from the competitive side is completely gone and you actually dance better for it."

"Burn" is ballroom dancing's answer to "Riverdance." It has been around since 1999, but only waltzed onto the Strip briefly in 2003, with a hastily booked week at Paris Las Vegas. Now the revue lands at Luxor through at least Oct. 26, where it will surround a schedule of weekend concert acts.

If it fails to pull an audience this time, producer Harley Medcalf can't blame bad timing. "Burn" opened two days after the return of the Top 10 TV hit, "Dancing With the Stars," which was kept warm over the summer by the success of Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance."

And "Burn" has a head start on "Simply Ballroom," a rival production that will reopen the Golden Nugget's downtown showroom next month.

"What is luck? It's preparation meets timing," Australian promoter Medcalf says of the revue, which has reached arena-rock popularity in Japan. "The groundswell around the world now is obviously wonderful for us and it has made a huge difference."

" 'Riverdance' has had it's moment and now we're striking while the iron's hot all over the world," says dancer Robin Windsor. "So many more people are now beginning to learn to dance all over the world. In England, where I'm from, there's a big craze for it at the moment."

When Medcalf was first inspired with his idea, after watching ballroom dancers at Elton John's 50th birthday party in 1997, "everyone thought I was absolutely and completely insane, mucking around with ballroom and Latin."

Now that the pop zeitgeist has caught up, "Burn" has streamlined the elaborate production design of its early days to focus more on the dance itself, "not the razzle-dazzle and the glimmer of the sequins," Sugden says. Choreographer Jason Gilkison "made it more real-life clothing, things you could almost wear out to a party. We're just showing the raw essence of the dancing. Not trying to cover it up with fluff."

The Luxor show keeps the original "Burn the Floor" name to build brand awareness on the Strip. But much of the material and some of the dancers come from a leaner, sexier spinoff that was titled "FloorPlay" in Australia last summer.

Rebecca Sugden, Damon's wife and dance partner onstage, says the older version of "Burn" was "introducing the art form. Now we're really explaining it."

The show still takes a page from the Cirque du Soleil playbook by taking unpolished gems -- in this case, young dancers fresh from competition -- and putting them into a cohesive theatrical context. "The talent was amazing but there was no technical support," Medcalf says.

Gilkison "looks for the younger kids with personality," the producer adds. "We're kind of the rebels. We're looking for the kids who have the personality and want to break out."

The performers say they're not so much giving up the adrenalin rush of competition as trading one kind of rush for another.

"That was one thing that appealed to me, it wasn't a competition," says dancer Jessica Raffa. "It was a group of people that loved what they did and performed together as one and not as individuals. That's what makes our show so different."

These dancers are the wrong people to ask why ballroom dancing became a TV fad. Most of them started some form of dance lessons as young children, and feel like the rest of the world is just now catching up to them. "It's kind of a breathe-out: 'Finally,' " Rebecca Sugden says.

"There was always this perception that ballroom dancing is what your grandparents used to do and we're here to basically show that's not what it's about anymore," her husband Damon adds.

The athleticism of modern competition, updated with modern music, is a factor as well.

"It's just like any sport, if you care to deem it as a sport. Runners get faster, and dancers have to progress and become more dynamic," Windsor says. "I think it's just a natural progression with information and studying what your body can do. It has to become better over time."

And, like the poker craze, the fad may be influenced by the fact that it's an accessible fantasy, something most people can at least attempt. With this show, at least, they try it vicariously.

Says Raffa, "A lot of people say, 'I feel like I've done the show with you,' and they come out sweating. That's what we love."