Twenty years have passed since Jason Gilkison created the version of Burn The Floor that would eventually reach Broadway. By the time he returned to make Luminous, the context around ballroom had changed. Television had made the forms internationally familiar, and many stage productions had absorbed the company’s methods. The creative brief was no longer to introduce audiences to ballroom in the theatre. It was to consider where Burn The Floor could take it next.
“It’s been 20 years since I first did the version of Burn The Floor that eventually made its way to Broadway,” says Gilkison. “This felt like the right timing to create something special and new on this wonderful company. I’m so excited about the possibilities of rediscovering the direction of the company.”
Gilkison describes the early impulse behind Burn The Floor as taking ballroom and Latin dancing and giving them “a good kick-lift”. With Luminous, he returned to the ethos of the company rather than attempting to discard its history.
“I really didn’t want to change anything that we had done in the past. I wanted to strengthen the ethos that we’ve always had,” he says. “The landscape of dance has changed pretty much all over the world, but particularly for this genre because of things like Dancing with the Stars being so popular in every single country. Many of these productions were copying and modelling themselves very much on Burn The Floor, so we really needed to think about how we stay ahead of the ball.”
That familiarity does, understandably, place pressure on the choreography. Waltz, cha-cha, tango and rumba arrive with established techniques, histories and theatrical associations. Gilkison’s interest lies in seeing what remains available within them.
“We think about how we can reinvent what we do on a very strong technical basis,” he says. “How can we see a waltz or a cha-cha, for example, in a different way? The difficult thing is that pretty much everything has been done, and we don’t want to be different just for difference’s sake. We want to be as creative and free as we can through that workshop process.”
Competition and theatre distribute attention differently. On a competition floor, the couple is presented for assessment. Technique is placed before adjudicators, with each partnership operating as a discrete unit. Theatre can place the same vocabulary inside a social setting, a period, a private exchange or a larger ensemble.
For Gilkison, this also creates a route back into the history of ballroom and Latin dance.
“The thing about competition dancing is that it now pretty much detaches itself from its roots,” he says. “What dancing in a theatrical form does is let us explore and go back to our history, reimagining storylines that might have taken place in those places. It’s always interesting to weave the narratives of different couples through so many different eras.”
Ballroom already contains its own dramatic structure. Lead and follow, distance and contact, invitation and refusal are written into the forms. In Luminous, relationships supply much of the narrative.
“We’re trying to show interesting relationships between people onstage, and that gives us a whole range of narrative,” says Gilkison. “It gives us fire, it gives us passion, it gives us so much to work with. When you see dancers expressing themselves and having interesting conversations with each other through their bodies, I think that is one of the most incredible things to witness. This is what the Burn The Floor dancers do so, so well.”
The search for those relationships begins with casting. Luminous includes world champions, experienced touring artists and younger dancers whose training extends into contemporary and commercial forms. Gilkison values the difference between them.
“Casting is a really interesting process, and I love the blend of dancers with different backgrounds in the room,” he says. “I think this is something I really learnt from my time on So You Think You Can Dance. The great thing today is that so many ballroom and Latin dancers have range and experience in other dance forms. When we come into the room to rehearse, we have so many more directions we can go in.”
Those backgrounds are not tidied away once rehearsals begin.
“What they individually bring to the table is so important,” Gilkison continues. “It’s about how they communicate through their bodies, while recognising their differences and what their genre and background add to the tapestry.”
He will also separate established partners, particularly when years of dancing together have made their responses too settled.
“I love mixing up partnerships that may have been together for a long time,” he says. “I think this gives us a different take on spontaneity. Sometimes, if you are dancing with the same person for so long, you tend to lose your ability to flex that muscle.”
In a production filled with highly trained dancers and closely worked ensemble passages, individuality can easily be absorbed into the finish. Gilkison gives the cast room to make decisions inside the choreography, even when some choices work better than others.
“You must give the dancers a licence to breathe and have freedom within the choreography,” he says. “It’s a really fine line, because you always want to keep the integrity of the production consistent. But the dancers must feel they have a licence to experiment and be in the actual moment.”
“Of course, that sometimes means they make decisions that aren’t as good as others, but in the end the overall payoff is incredible. Everybody needs to be very clear on the goal we are working towards, and that takes precedence, but I’m a big fan of keeping performances as free-flowing as possible.”
The same preference for live response governs the music. A band has always been essential to the force of Burn The Floor, and Luminous again places musicians and vocalists inside the action rather than treating sound as a fixed layer beneath it.
“Our genre’s history is based in the world of live music, so having elements of that onstage is really important to us,” says Gilkison. “It blurs the line between artists so well. We don’t just have dancers, singers and musicians. Everyone is contributing to an overall effect.”
A recorded track repeats exactly. Live music requires the dancers to keep listening - after all, like the dancing, live music can not be repeated exactly.
“There is something that happens when you’re dancing to live music that doesn’t happen when you are hearing a recorded piece,” he says. “It’s just different.”
Gilkison begins with the score thoroughly mapped. Before he enters the studio, he knows its accents, transitions and architecture, and carries a clear visual conception of the choreography. The arrival of the cast changes it.
“All the numbers change significantly once you have the cast in the room with you,” he says. “I do a lot of background work as a rule. I know every beat of the music inside out before I start. I know in my head what I want the piece to look like. But when you’re dealing with individual personalities, the whole thing takes a different tone.”
The dancers’ characters and technical strengths become part of the work, rather than details to be accommodated after the choreography has been set.
“You must make sure you are recognising the interesting characters and different technical abilities that you’re suddenly surrounded by when creating,” he says. “This is actually my favourite process. Sometimes it looks exactly like it did in your head; sometimes it takes a completely different turn.”
That process is central to the contemporaneity Gilkison wants for Luminous. The production draws on dances with long and specific histories, while its performers arrive with present-day training, references and attitudes.
“Ballroom and Latin American dancing has always been a bit of a social history,” he says. “What I hope people take away from this show is how relevant the techniques we use are in today’s social situations. We’re not just looking at a bygone age where people used to dance in a church hall on a Saturday night. These are young, vibrant dancers with young, vibrant sensibilities, and they have exciting stories to tell.”
For audiences accustomed to ballroom through television, Luminous removes the marks, eliminations and weekly categories. The dances sit alongside one another across an evening, carried by a full company and a live band. Technique becomes the means by which dancers sustain character, relationships and atmosphere across the production.
Long-time followers of Burn The Floor will recognise its appetite for speed, glamour and physical risk. Gilkison is interested in how much freedom can be found inside that identity: in a changed partnership, a musician responding in real time, or a dancer making a choice that did not exist before the performance began.
For Gilkison, the rehearsal room remains the point of it all.
“I’m most alive when I’m in a room full of incredible dancers. This is what keeps me going,” he says. “Just when I think I’m fulfilled with what I want to do, I always get the urge to create something new. Dancers are the thing that drives me the most. I just love being in the rehearsal room.”
Burn The Floor: Luminous continues its Australian tour until 10 October 2026. View dates and tickets.
-Olivia Weeks