If you’ve taken ballroom dance lessons, you remember how to measure the steps: “One, two, cha cha cha ... one, two, cha cha cha ...”

Unlike you, nobody’s going to move their lips counting in “Champions of the Dance,” happening Sunday at the Performing Arts Center of Wenatchee. The couples onstage mastered the steps long ago; now it’s all about making the dance as fluid, refined, graceful and crowd-pleasing as it can be.

“The choreography that you see on the stage, presented by these dancers, is a lot more difficult than what you would see at a normal dance studio, at a social dance, at a competition,” says show producer and co-creator Hong Cheng. “This is for show and for stage and for theater.”

Ballroom dancing has become something of a spectator sport in recent years, with the popular TV contest “Dancing With the Stars” and PBS’s “America’s Ballroom Challenge” — a broadcast of the Ohio Star Ball Championships, a world-class dance tournament with international competitors. Cheng, a former ballroom dance competitor and now a theatrical producer, launched “Champions of the Dance” just over a year ago. With producing partner Steve Love, she recruited top-flight dancers who’d won titles at some of the biggest ballroom contests in the world, including the Empire State Professional Open, the Commonwealth Classic and the prestigious Blackpool Dance Festival.

Paired off in couples, the dancers take a spin about the stage and incorporate daring spins, dips and turnabouts in the most famous ballroom styles: waltz, rumba, jive, Latin, you name it. Aside from touring throughout the nation, the show also did a sold-out one-night stand at New York’s Town Hall in January. Among the stars dancing at the Wenatchee show is Inna Brayer, who’s competed on “Dancing With the Stars,” with new partner Andrey Motyl.

“I never became a dance floor champion with the titles,” says Cheng, in a conference call along with fellow producer Love, “and now I have all these dancers onstage and I enjoy them being appreciated by the audience.”

Go! Magazine: Ballroom competitions have been around for a long time, but why do you think it’s come to public attention now? People are asking to see this.

Hong Cheng: I think it’s because now people are paying more attention to interpersonal relationships. Social dancing has always been a way for people to become closer. It’s the touch of a hand that brings people to something more than face to face. There’s a huge difference between having eye contact and not having eye contact when you talk to someone. You deepen that relationship if you put your hand in someone else’s and dance with someone. People are becoming more aware of the interactions between one another, and they see the difference that it makes.

Steve Love: The popularity of the television shows is another thing. This is a style now that’s become popularized.

Go!: What you notice in some of those shows is that they audition as solo dancers, but then they’re forced to pair off for competition.

Cheng: They’re all capable as individual dancers, but it takes even more to build up a partnership. They each individually can dance, but I guess the choreographers, directors, or even the audiences wanted to see couple [Note] is this cq, or is it “couples”? [/NOTE] dancing versus just soloists. You see a different presentation: You see the interactions, you see the partnership, you see the teamwork, you see something different. You’ve seen duets from ballets, and that’s very different from just seeing one individual soloist.

Go!: It’s kind of like a forced intimacy, dancing with someone. You have to learn how to communicate and open yourself up.

Love: “Forced intimacy!” I’ve never heard that before. Maybe that should be the name of one of our dances.

Cheng: I would interpret that as a negative connotation, but if you say it positively it, you would say this is “imposed contact.”

Love: It’s an interesting subject. I wouldn’t say it’s forced intimacy, but I would say that you have to know the style. Before you dance the foxtrot or Latin or jive or swing, you have to have studied it. It’s not just something you pick up in the clubs.

Go!: Do the dancers always work in the same pairs? Do they switch partners?

Cheng: They usually have a very stable partner whom they compete and dance show numbers with. Things will change over time, so let’s say they’re dancing together now, and it is possible that three or six months down the road the partnership doesn’t work, and they will be looking for a new partner. That partnership may last a couple of months or a couple of years. We had couples on the last tour who are no longer dancing together — each found new partners. Everybody grows in a different direction and a different emphasis. It’s not necessarily a bad thing that they split and find a new partner.

Go!: Would it be fair to ask which of the individual dances is more difficult?

Cheng: Each dance could be just as difficult as another. It’s all depending on the choreography. It’s more difficult with the music and the complexity of the choreography. A waltz is not more difficult than a tango. You can’t compare the two things.