Contemporary heels dancers are ready to ignite the ProArts Playhouse. Courtesy photo

Taking inspiration from “The Wizard of Oz,” an ensemble of dancers from Maui’s Move Me Dance Company will enact various scenes in a “Over the Rainbow” show debuting Nov. 23 at the ProArts Playhouse.

Move Me Dance specializes in contemporary heels dancing, also known as stiletto dance, a high-energy style that involves performing in high heels. Characterized by precise movements, footwork and body control, it can be performed to different genres of music.

“It’s a very empowering movement,” explains Move Me Dance founder Elena Schweitzer. “It is very freeing, fun and expressive, and takes a lot of skill and technique to dance the style in heels. What’s great about it is it’s a bunch of different genres. So it’s kind of like jazz and hip-hop and salsa and burlesque all combined.”

A Dance Magazine article on how the dance form has become popular across the U.S. and abroad described it as “a fusion of styles performed to popular music in three-inch, four-inch or even higher stilettos. The best and most popular performers make dancing in heels look effortless, gliding across the floor and whipping around in a shoe that many struggle to walk in.”

Moving to Maui from Canada in 2012, Schweitzer grew up in Vancouver exposed to “lots of different dance genres, hip-hop and jazz and tap and street jazz, and all these different dance classes.”

Initially founding the Army of Sass Maui dance company in 2017, she explains, “the sole basis of our classes was to empower women and men. We don’t discriminate between women or men that want to join our program, but it’s a kind of very feminine style of dance. With one small location in Lahaina, we started classes and a performance program.”

As the popularity of the heels classes grew by the “beginning of 2020, we had done our 10th performance session, and had booked the Iao Theater. We had over 70 girls performing, with four different groups and three locations — Lahaina, Kihei and Haiku. Then COVID happened, so that shut down my company and since then, we’ve rebranded as Move Me.”

With locations in Kihei and Haiku, Move Me’s dancers are currently learning the choreography for “Over the Rainbow.”

“Each group learns about three different numbers, and then we’ll do a finale number,” Schweitzer says. “It’s all centered around a really fun theme.”

Previous themed events have included a “Cinematic” show at ProArts in May with dance recreations of iconic films like “Jaws,” “Top Gun” and “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

“This show is going to be really exciting because we’re bringing it back to our more theater roots,” she notes. “We have some scripting and some main characters that are running throughout the show, but everything is centered around heels dance style. So we take every scene, the Tin Man or the Lion scene or the Wicked Witch of the West scene, and put a sexy spin on it.”

With 25 dancers performing, “Over the Rainbow” is choreographed by Emily Henderson and Dani Reeves with a script by Kelly Estrella.

Collaborating with Fuzz Box Maui’s Trevor Arnholt, Schweitzer explains, “he helps us to create a very seamless show flow, recording the audio that’s going to carry the narration through the scenes.”

With two performances on Nov. 23, Schweitzer says the show is “like a bunch of genres meshed into one very commercial, almost like MTV music style dancing. What’s really amazing is most of the performers are not professional dancers. We have all different levels and different shapes, sizes, and backgrounds. They are just regular people that work. It’s a very entertaining experience.”

And the heels?

“The teachers and the more advanced students are in the higher heel category,” she says. “It can be anything from a cute, chunky, booty-style heel to a kitten heel to a four-inch stiletto.”

“Over the Rainbow” will be at the ProArts Playhouse at 7 and 8:30 p.m. Nov. 23. Tickets range from $30 to $55 with a $5 discount for seniors and kama’aina with a state of Hawai’i ID.