**** If you are a fan of “Dancing with the Stars”, you will find a little bit of heaven onstage at The Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place. Created by Mark Swanhart ( who is also the director and writer, and who I had the good fortune to interview on last Sunday’s show), this is about one hour and twenty minutes of wonderful dance action, where we are brought to  our feet at its ending, which is an amazing dance number to the music of “Dancing” from “Saturday Night Fever”.

The choreography in this show is by KC Monnie, who uses the very small and intimate stage at the Playhouse to its best. This show could not work as well in a larger theater. The performers, led by Val Chmerkovskiy, his wife, Jenna Johnson-Chmerkovskiy, Artem Chigvintsev and a host of others truly fill this stage with glorious dance numbers. The cast listed in the program also includes Olivia Cava, Kenidee Allen, Kayli Johnston, Jalen Forward, Jack Moore, Allie Miexner, Pasha Pashkov, Daniella Karagach and Maks Chmerkovskiy( who will join the show in August).

The costumes (Daniela Gschwendtner) are sparkling, sexy and fun. The lighting ( Ryan Healey) is dramatic and sensual and the set (Shaun Motley) gives you the feeling that we are in a club. In fact, they have four booths onstage and there were audience members seated there enjoying their drinks and in the final set, dancing with the cast members. They do get the audience immersed as well. They did a number using the “Hey Big Spender” song to have drinks with a gentleman who was pulled from the audience. The funnier bit was the Bachelorette Party where three of the ladies strolled the audience until they found Marcy, who became the bride and danced and flirted with Val. A cute bit adding some great fun and comic touches. She was terrific. If you get picked, roll with it- never say no- you will miss the time of your life.

The dance number to “Time In A Bottle” was almost ballet and far different than most of what we watched. I would have to say that although I am not into dance as much as Jane is, I found the smoothness of the show and the audience participation as a nice evening of entertainment. In fact, on the way home, as I thought about the final number, I found myself wishing there was a second act, so that we could grab a cocktail and savor the evening with this glorious group of dancers.

“Savor After Hours” will continue hru – Aug 18, with performances as follows: