Do Teamsters Dance Like This?

From Riverdance to Stomp, dance companies are tapping their way to success with innovative choreography and inventive ways to present it.

Now there's a new contender, this one from Australia: Steel City, a production designed to recreate a factory floor. Tap-dancing men and women hang from steel rafters and leap through huge steel-belted radial tires.

"There are lots of tricks, effects, and surprises, but at the end of the day, the dance is always the star of the show," Dein Perry, the show's director and choreographer, tells CBS This Morning Co-Anchor Thalia Assuras.

Perry's inspiration for his style of heavy tap comes from the industrial sounds of the steel plant where Perry worked as a fitter and turner.

"I'm a mechanic, an industrial mechanic," says Perry, who was accustomed to working with heavy machinery. "I loved dancing when I was younger, so I put the two elements together and use the heavy machinery as props."

In 1991, he was awarded a grant from the Australian Arts Council to develop this new approach to tap dancing. The result was the smash hit Tap Dogs, which has grossed $15 million worldwide.

His second production, Steel City, premiered in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. Now the dancers are kicking off a 40-city North American tour with an engagement at New York's Radio City Music Hall Jan. 26 through 30. Other cities on the itinerary include Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Chicago, Toronto, and Baltimore.

Why are audiences buying into this dance craze so heavily?

"There hasn't been a lot of it around for a long time," explains Perry. "It was there in the '30s and '40s, I guess. It seems to be coming back. People enjoy it. It's energetic."