Professional ballroom is a famously competitive sport: its dancers are popularly imagined to be at fingernails and stilettos drawn. But the 22 couples who have joined forces to perform the new ballroom spectacle Burn The Floor have sheathed their weapons. And seeing all 44 of them moving in choreographed formation, instead of ferociously finessing their competition moves, is one of the most impressive of the show's effects.
A bevy of masked waltzers opens the event, whirling against a star-spangled sky with fairy lights glittering among the women's petticoats. It is already a different world from Come Dancing, and oh so much prettier than sequins. But far more novel is the fact that the performers are then allowed to abandon their routines, and literally let rip. As the waltz lilts decorously to its close, the dancers tear off their evening clothes to reveal chains and tattoos, and the dance changes gear into a frenzy of hard-edged cha-cha overlaid with a bit of hip hop and urban funk.
For director/choreographer Anthony van Laast, the point of the show is to recapture the guts and heart of social dancing, so while his cast are allowed to show off some of their familiar moves, they are also required to segue from street dance to disco, from lindy hop to flamenco.
Costume designer Bonita Bryg dresses this stylistic parade in a riot of brash and extravagant outfits, and set designer Mark Fisher works some slickly ingenious magic in transforming the stage from fairyland to nightclub to Spanish square.
Their combined efforts produce a hugely professional show in which the dancers beam out megawatts of energy, and for the thousands of ballroom fans packed into the Albert Hall this was clearly a night to remember.
For fans of more specialist theatre dance, it may be less of a hit. Though the dancers are gamely versatile, they can only deliver chorus-line performances in most of the new styles required of them, and the show screams out for a few genuine virtuosos. In the street dance section no one body-pops to any real standard; in the lindy there is no aerial daredevilry, and the flamenco and tango are token gestures to anyone who has seen the real thing.
Burn The Floor may be a show all about dancing, but by the end it feels disappointingly short on steps.
• At the Royal Albert Hall (0171-589 8212) tonight and Manchester Arena (0161-930 8000) on Friday
