After graduating from Santa Fe High School in 1985, Burgess attended the University of New Mexico and studied dance and Asian history.

He also studied the Michio Itō technique in Washington, D.C.[6] In 1992, Burgess established the Moving Forward: Contemporary Asian American Dance Company.

The performance included the premiere of Hyphen, a surrealist dance work featuring video images by Nam June Paik from the 1960s, which Burgess was granted special access to.

He spoke and presented his dance Dariush at the White House at the invitation of President Barack Obama in May 2013 as part of National Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Burgess' work has focused on the immigrant experience and cultural divides, which has resulted in several of his performances being showcased on prominent State Department sponsored tours around the world.

He has taught, lectured, performed and toured around the world in countries such as Surinam, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Korea, China, India, Pakistan, Mongolia, Venezuela, Germany, Latvia, Ecuador, Panama, Mexico, Peru, and Cambodia, among others.

[19] Burgess and his dancers were featured as part of the museum's “Dancing the Dream” exhibition, where his portrait hung alongside modern-dance pioneers including Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham, and contemporary 'masters' Twyla Tharp and Mark Morris.

[20] Burgess's 2008 surrealist work "Hyphen" was re-staged to be included alongside an orchestral multimedia performance called "KYOPO: Multiplicity" by CYJO in the museum's Kogod Courtyard in 2012.

[21] In May 2014 he told Smithsonian magazine that his work Confluence, created as part of DTSBDC's residency at National Portrait Gallery, explored “an underlying inter-connectedness" of all people.

Somehow I feel that my aesthetic is embracing a much larger vision of humanity's shared emotional journey.”[10] In November 2014 the Korean Cultural Center of Washington, DC presented an exhibition called "Ancestry, Artistry, Choreography" about Burgess, his immigrant ancestors, and his dance company that "document[ed] his multicultural background and its influence on his ballet-meets-contemporary work".

[2][3][4][5] Starting in 2021, Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company launched a short dance film series, with each video honoring social justice icons, including Marian Anderson, William A. Campbell, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, J. Rosamond Johnson, Earl Warren, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, and George Takei.

[28][29][30][31][32][33] Burgess launched Slant Podcast, "a discussion series with Asian-American luminaries from the arts, academia, journalism, and other sectors about identity, belonging, and creating in America" in June 2021.

Feeling "caught between different cultural worlds" as a child, Burgess has said he created the program as a way for young people to explore identity, artistic self-expression, and their Asian American heritage.

[38] Burgess designed and oversaw the implementation of a new, global distance and onsite learning MFA program for dance at the George Washington University in 2011.

[48][49][50] A short documentary about Burgess and the dance company, with funding from the Humanities Council DC, called "Passages from the Journey", was premiered online in December 2020.

[53] In 2011, "The Reliable Source" reported that Burgess became engaged to yoga teacher and playwright Jameson Freeman[54][55] while touring the temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia.