You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

This is Key Change, where I talk to fascinating people about the music that changed their lives.

My guest is Baz Luhrmann, the award-winning director whose films include Moulin Rouge, Strictly Ballroom,

The Great Gatsby, Elvis, and Romeo and Juliet.

His newest film is Epic, Elvis Presley in Concert, a critically acclaimed documentary about Elvis

that's playing right now in theaters and in IMAX.

Before becoming a massively successful film director, Baz began his showbiz career as an actor and as a ballroom dancer in Australia.

His first film was Strictly Ballroom, which came out in 1992,

and became one of the highest-grossing Australian films of all time.

It was originally a play, and there's a song in the film

that was part of the story all the way back when it was first performed on stage.

And that's what Baz and I talked about for this episode.

There are quite a few songs that have changed my life, but no song really changed the

trajectory of my life more than time after time by Sidney Loppa.

I'm so thrilled that you picked time after time

because that is already a song that I associate with you

because of Strictly Ballroom.

Yeah.

Well, you know what?

And growing up in a tiny country town, our working class theater was competitive ballroom dancing.

Do you feel like your background in ballroom dancing, your training, you know, when you were younger,

...