TV dance and art dance enjoying their pas de deux

With cheering audiences, swirling lights, smiling hosts, at-home voting and flashy guest stars such as Lady Gaga​, "So You Think You Can Dance" and similar hit programs have turned a once-aloof art form into must-see television.

"I think, finally, America is going, 'Oh, OK, this is something that is awesome to do,' " said champion ballroom dancer Jonathan Roberts, who has appeared on seven seasons of "Dancing With the Stars."

The question now is what, if any, impact the television dance sensation is having on what might be called art dance, the more rarefied world of tutus and toe shoes, where angst can be every bit as important as acrobatics.

Like many people in the field, emerging ballet choreographer Emery LeCrone does not have a ready response.

"I don't think I can answer that yet, because I think it is something we're only going to be able to know in five to 10 years," she said.

Probably the largest and most direct intersection of the two dance realms so far will take place Saturday evening, when the Vail International Dance Festival presents "Dance TV," a program featuring Roberts and seven other contestants and guest stars from three of the most popular shows.

Artistic director Damian Woetzel​ has been wowed by the buzz surrounding these TV programs and the quality of much of the dancing, and he felt like the festival simply could not afford to ignore the phenomenon.

"I thought: 'Don't act like it just exists there (on TV),' " he said. "These are performers. They dance. Let's put them on stage and let's see what we can make."

While virtually everyone in the art-dance world sees the television-induced surge in the form's popularity as a positive thing, many are not convinced it'll translate into bigger audiences for ballet or modern dance.

"There's no hard evidence about any of this at this point," said Ella Baff​, executive and artistic director of the Jacob's Pillow Dance, a famed summer

Dancer Lauren Froderman, a winner in the TV series "So You Think You Can Dance," will hit the stage in Vail. (Pati Pakulis, Provided by Vail International Dance Festival)

festival in Becket, Mass. "There haven't been any national surveys or anything like that."

The problem, she and others said, is that the dance typically seen on television is inherently different from much of what is presented on the stages of summer festivals and performing-arts centers.

For the most part, television dance is concerned almost exclusively with virtuosity and showiness, while works by choreographers such as George Balanchine​, Mark Morris and Paul Taylor tend to be more layered with a broader emotional range.

The most obvious difference, though, might be the duration of the dances. While performances on shows such as "America's Best Dance Crew" usually last only a few minutes, in part to accommodate commercial breaks, ballets can stretch on for several hours.

'So You Think You Can Dance' and 'Black Swan' and YouTube is a world we live in, where, bam, you're impressed for two minutes," LeCrone said. "High art is not something that translates onto YouTube."

If the two realms don't always have much to say to each other artistically, choreographer Trey McIntyre, whose Boise, Idaho-based company performs tonight in Vail, believes there is much the art-dance world can learn from dance TV in terms of accessibility and packaging.

"People in the United States do not want to be made to feel stupid by (a dance) work," McIntyre said. "They want to know more. They want to know what goes into it, how you make a dance and what a dancer's personality is like."

Through on-air interviews and behind-the-scenes glimpses, TV dance programs often spend as much time profiling their participants as they do on the performances themselves.

McIntyre said his company tries to do much the same thing by providing online interviews of its dancers and documentaries on his works that offer context and background that bolster what happens on stage.

If the shape of the potential impact of dance TV on the field has not yet come into focus, it is clear that such programs have made the general public vastly more aware of the art form.

"In the end, there are some phenomenal dancers and there is a lot of dancing going on, and there is an acceptance of dance in general through these shows," Woetzel said. "On that level, it's having an influence — and it's going to have an ongoing influence."