On August 10, Latter-day Saint Alexis Warr Burton from Highland, Utah, was crowned the winner of season 17 of So You Think You Can Dance on Fox. The 22-year-old also made history as the first female Latin/Ballroom dancer to win the $100,000 prize.
Warr Burton clearly understands the importance of family support and gave her loved ones in the audience a shout out in her interview after the announcement. When asked about her favorite moments on the show, Alexis told host Cat Deeley, “Honestly, every week has been such a blessing. … There are so many things I learned about myself.”
You can watch her emotional victory speech in the YouTube player below.
Burton trained in ballet, contemporary, hip hop, jazz, tap, gymnastics and ballroom starting age 6 at the Center Stage Performing Arts Studio in Orem—the same studio where professional dancer and television judge Derek Hough studied—and went on to compete on America’s Got Talent and World of Dance. She and her fellow Latter-day Saint dancer Charity Anderson also toured with Utah native Derek Hough back in 2018.
“We are in a dance world that is very demanding,” Warr Burton told Deseret News in 2018. “It’s very hard and competitive and we easily compare ourselves to everyone. We get down on ourselves a lot. And then we always question ourselves like, ‘Are we enough? Am I doing good enough?’ That is what has impacted me the most on this tour and what I feel like changed me more and changed the way I approach things. It’s just very heartwarming.”
Warr Burton married her high school sweetheart in the Provo City Center Temple in 2018.
You can watch one of Alexis’s powerful contemporary routines from earlier this season in the YouTube player below.
