Burn The Floor

The first eight or so minutes of Burn the Floor are, for fans of classical ballroom dancing, downright depressing. Dancers come out in pairs wearing bits of black mesh and sequins to grab each other and writhe. What hath ABC's reality hit dancing With the Stars wrought?!

Well, aside from that minor misstep, a pretty solid show. It's true that Dancing plays fast and loose with what would be considered the art of the ballroom -- costumes are always backless, flash is spilled over form and every celebrity competing must at one point cry.

But the pairs taking part in the revue now playing at the Longacre are pros (and international; singer Ricky Rojas introduces them at the end by country, as if we had been at the Olympics), and turn it out as expected. This is the flashiest dance show out there, and audiences will never be bored, from the eclectic music to the truly jaw-dropping stunts some of the cast can pull; the show's producers did it a solid when they decided not to also shoehorn in a story.

Briefly, it was even the most cross-generationally appealing show on Broadway, despite the writhing -- that is until a hot little number in which a female dancer dances with six male dancers, blindfolded. (Don't bring your Episcopalian grandmas.)

Director-choreographer Jason Gilkison moves the numbers along nicely through four different themed sections (of which the first, "Inspirations," makes little sense -- should've called it "Everything But the Kitchen Sink") incorporating everything from classic waltzes to a form called "jive."

Dancing celebrity partners (and real-life fiances) Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Karina Smirnoff, who appear through Aug. 16, perform a glorified cameo in a few numbers, whipping the audience in a frenzy but not offering anything ticketholders later won't miss.