Chad Holtzman is a Canadian employed by Australians to play a Swede on behalf of dancing queens everywhere - from here to Timbuktu, in fact.

But the extreme global demands haven't dampened his enthusiasm and bemusement over spending the past seven years carrying the titular burden of Bjorn Again, the world's first and most successful ABBA tribute band.

That success story is about to take a chance on us for the first time Saturday when Bjorn Again brings its note-perfect ABBA renditions to the stage of the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts.

With every last costume spangle intact.

How uncannily precise are their live re-creations of ditties such as "Dancing Queen," "Take a Chance On Me" and "Mamma Mia"?

So close that even several of the famously elusive original ABBA members have come forth to testify ("the closest fans are going to get to seeing ABBA," said Benny Andersson).

Because the blonde and very Nordic-looking Holtzman is only 34, that means he was just a babe in swaddling clothes when the original ABBA was churning out its perky repertoire.

"The awful truth is, prior to joining the band, I'd never listened to ABBA," says Holtzman, who assumes the persona of ABBA overlord Bjorn Ulvaeus.

"You know, I probably heard a few of the songs, maybe. But that was the extent of it. I was more jazz, rock and blues-oriented."

Holtzman was born in 1974, the year ABBA first cracked the American Top 40 with "Waterloo." ABBA disbanded around the time he was turning 8 (1982).

Holtzman, already a guitarist and singer gigging around the Calgary bar scene in his native Alberta, got his crash ABBA course when he landed the spot of bass player for Bjorn Again's backing band of instrumentalists.

"It was really just another gig for me," he confesses, "and a chance to do some traveling. So I did a year or two of playing bass, even though I was actually a guitar player."

Eventually he moved from bass to guitar, "and I started checking out the tunes at that point, and I realized that, yeah, some of the songs were really pretty good - well-crafted dance-pop music."

Then the songs' deceptively perky lyrics began insinuating their way into his too-young-to-remember psyche.

"Some of them are actually pretty serious about relationships - no kidding," he says. "So I have a very deep respect for Benny and Bjorn, who were the chief songwriters."

Bjorn Again was forged 20 years ago in Melbourne by two musicians, Rod Leissle and John Tyrell. Their first gig, in a Melbourne pub, sold out, provoked "hysterical" reactions and inspired the two men to keep at it.

Within a couple of years, they were touring globally.

Holtzman describes Bjorn Again as "a really high-end cover band."

As a Canadian rock-blues guitarist who was weaned on Led Zeppelin and now spends a lot of his nights in a spangly white jumpsuit ("my satin pajamas"), he admits it can be "amusing, very amusing at times."

Holtzman says "we all take pride in playing the music, and it's clear to the audience that we're having fun playing the music."

His caveat for anyone planning on partaking of that fun: "We're bringing our sparkly costumes to cut a rug, so you bring your sparkly costumes and get set to cut a rug, too."

WHO: Bjorn Again.

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 22.

WHERE: Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts.

TICKETS: $22.90 to $34.50; call 1-866-686-9541, toll-free.

dcraft@pantagraph.com