When “Dancing With the Stars” began in America in 2005, Derek Hough was a 20-year-old competitive Latin dancer, living and training in London with ballroom champions Corky and Shirley Ballas. Thanks to the success of the ABC series, today Hough – who still holds the record for winning the DWTS “mirror ball trophy” six times in his 17 years on the show – is a celebrity of rock star proportions.

Nowhere was that more evident than at Thursday night’s “Symphony of Dance: Encore” tour stop at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, where a full house erupted with deafening volume the moment Hough took the stage. When he took off his shirt several dances later, it was – for those old enough to remember it – reminiscent of the besotted frenzy of Beatlemania.

The crowd’s enthusiasm was well warranted. For nearly two hours, Hough, his wife, Hayley, and eight backup dancers (four men, four women) put on a performance of epic proportions and astounding ability, amped up with thunderous music, flashing and streaming lights, glitzy costumes, confetti, streamers and smoke. With musicians playing from raised platforms on either side of the stage and a center staircase for dramatic entrances, they ran the gamut of partner dancing from rumba to chacha to jive, with a heavy dose of astoundingly acrobatic choreography woven throughout.

The tour, which began in California in June, marks the return to the stage of Haley Hough, who suffered a life-threatening brain bleed in December of 2023 during a previous incarnation of the show, “Symphony of Dance.” Not only has she made a remarkable recovery, returning to dance training a mere four months after the incident, just seven months ago she gave birth to the couple’s first child after a previous miscarriage (all of which Hough talks about openly during the production).

The couple’s joy in being back on stage together was obvious and her full recovery exhibited not only in her speed, flexibility and artistry, but in fitness and a figure that must have made any post-partum women in the audience green with envy. The Houghs were spotlighted throughout the show, but integrated seamlessly with the other dancers, one of whom admitted, after Hough stopped to catch his breath, that he was born in 2007, the year Hough first won “DWTS.” (Due to there being no program offered, I regret that I cannot credit by name the other dancers and the musicians, all of whom deserve kudos.)

Each song brought a different dance style and further burst of creative choreography. An Argentine tango featured long red ribbons the other dancers wound around the Houghs in a kind of “cats cradle” as they formed different patterns. “Bad to the Bone,” with the dancers in shiny, futuristic-looking black unitards, put bodies in positions unfathomable for most humans.

After Hough delivered an emotional account of his wife’s accident, the aftermath and the birth of their daughter, Everly – “Who knew that the biggest thing that ever happened to us could be so small?” – there was a sweet and funny piece with all the dancers wheeling around a perambulator on stage, yawning, “shhhh”ing and pinching their fingers to their noses over dirty diapers. (One diaper ended up in the audience – intentionally – filled with “merch.”)

Throughout, Hough integrated the audience, speaking directly and genuinely about the power of dance, connection and love. Twice, audience members were pulled on stage – once so Hough could demonstrate his ability to leap frog over three women in a line standing front to back, a second time, when a woman was invited to become a “judge,” a la “DWTS.” (This bit included Hough’s hilarious imitation of histrionic “DWTS”  judge Bruno Tonioli.) As at a sports event, merchandise (sweat towels? t-shirts?) was shot into the audience with a giant slingshot.

There were also tributes to Hough’s dance icons – Tina Turner, the “queen” of rock ‘n roll; Len Goodman, the acerbic former “DTWS” judge who was Hough’s longtime mentor and guide; and his personal idol, Gene Kelly. The rapid-fire tap sequence in the “Singin’ in the Rain” number was simply further proof of Hough’s diversified talent; he’d already sung on several numbers and creditably played a mean electric guitar.

If there was anything to critique, it was simply the sensory overload. The music was overpoweringly loud, to the point of obscuring the lyrics in most numbers, and the bank of lights that flashed directly at the audience, at times blinding. All the more reason to appreciate the “clean, simple waltz” the Houghs danced to bring the whole extravaganza to a quiet, but emotional conclusion.

You go to a show like this to be moved by the movement; you don’t expect there to be an enduring message. But there was that too. Hough shared the impact dance has had on his life – his parents met while ballroom dancing in college so “I literally would not be alive without dance” – and its ability to bring people together. In a world currently facing so many problems, he encouraged the audience to focus on the good “because where our focus goes, the energy goes.”

“Embrace the storm and choose to sing and dance,” he urged. And the audience responded as one, at his direction holding aloft their lit cell phones, waving and swaying as he conducted from the stage.