A DANCING With the Stars’ ex-crew member has spilled some behind-the-scenes tour secrets in an exclusive interview with The U.S. Sun.

Adam Powell previously spoke out about abruptly being fired from the DWTS Live 2024 tour after working 100-hour weeks and being part of six other DWTS tours in the past.

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Rehearsals began in December 2023 and everyone arrived in Virginia on January 6 to begin technical rehearsals, per the ex-staffer.

Adam, who worked as the tour's music director and sound engineer, is now revealing behind-the-scenes secrets.

For one, he believes the tour was thrown together too quickly and that the dancers did not have enough time to make it as great of a show as it had been in previous years.

Adam speculates that the reason for this could be because there has been a major change to the target audience.

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The tour is now choreographed with a younger audience in mind, he claimed, since "three years ago, most of the people who came to our shows were 50 and above."

When it came to putting the show together, he explained, "All the dances for the show, except for ones that they pull straight from [the DWTS show], are actually choreographed in rehearsals in that two-week period.

"The whole show is created from scratch, so it just doesn't give you a whole lot of time to recognize that something isn't working and to revise it. You just got to go with your first idea.

"And that's why some of this stuff appears kind of lazy on stage when fans talk about choreography not being great."

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He then went on to say that the dancers argued here and there, but given the time constraint, the arguments were quickly resolved.

"Obviously, there's always going to be little arguments and stuff," he spilled, "but they are cleared up almost immediately."

For one, Adam previously said that part of the reason why he was fired was because he heard complaints from the dancers that "they couldn't hear certain songs or certain songs were too loud."

EMOTIONALLY DRAINING

The multi-city tour kicked off on January 11 in Richmond, Virginia, and there are tour dates up until March 27, 2024.

The pro dancers on the tour include Gleb Savchenko, Alan Bersten, Brandon Armstrong, Britt Stewart, Daniella Karagach, Pasha Pashkov, Emma Slater, and Rylee Arnold.

Performing in select cities are Julianne Hough, Artem Chigvintsev, Jenna Johnson, Val Chmerkovskiy, as well as special guest stars Xochitl Gomez, Charity Lawson, and Harry Jowsey.

Adam claimed that he, the rest of the 12 staffers who traveled on the tour bus to each city, and the pros only stay in "nice hotels" one day a week because the rest of the time, they're on the tour bus traveling from city to city.

The Utah-based ex-crew member said that everybody was pretty much "overworked" and that the crew, especially, worked "much, much longer hours than normal" with "lower than the standard" pay.

"It's a bigger set that takes longer to load in, longer to construct, and longer to load out," he reasoned.

"For the first two weeks of the tour, the stage manager typically works the longest hours.

"This guy would get up before six every morning... and then would be on duty typically until 1:30 or 2 o'clock in the morning the next day.

"So we're talking about 19-hour days, six days in a row, and then sleeping on a bus for three, four hours and getting up and doing it all again. And almost the entire crew was working these types of hours."

He continued, "That's a death march. It's not possible to keep it up for three months. And I think that other people are going to flame out. I predict that."

TAKING A BREAK

Fans picked up on the fact that some pro dancers were not part of Live 2024 tour, leaving them questioning what had happened.

Koko Iwasaki, Peta Murgatroyd, and Sasha Farber were pros on DWTS Season 32, but were not part of the 2024 tour lineup.

While Adam did not know exactly why some dancers did not continue on with the tour, he could only speculate it had to do with pay and mental health.

"I don't know how much the dancers get paid, but I know from talking to individual dancers that there are pros on the TV show who have refused to tour at certain times because they were making better money teaching in the convention circuit," he said.

"So, they're not paying a competitive wage to the dancers. If the dancers can make better money teaching kids how to dance, then it's probably not a lot."

He also said that some dancers take a break for their "emotional wellbeing" since they've worked so hard on the show - each season could be up to five months - and they simply "need a break."

NEW SEASON 33 PROS?

Since Season 33 casting for Dancing With the Stars has not been revealed, including the judges' panel, it is unknown if all the pros from last season will be returning.

However, sometimes the dancers on the tour can be asked to be a pro on the upcoming season.

The dancers currently on the tour that are not pros on the regular season are Alexis Warr, Ezra Sosa, and Kailyn Rogers.

Adam said that the staff is just as much left in the dark when it comes to casting decisions - something that is not known until normally August before the show premieres in September.

Adam told The U.S. Sun that he hopes that the tour dancers who are not pros can get promoted "because they all deserve a shot."

He explained, "They're all really that good. I hope so. But sometimes a TV show makes strange casting decisions, and I honestly thought that Alexis was going to be a pro [in 2023], and they went with Rylee at the last minute, which was a big shocker. 

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"Rylee did a great job, but whether she deserved to be jump ahead of other people who were waiting in line like Alexis, that's a hard call."

No official announcements have been made for Season 33 of DWTS.

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