While the nation has been trembling over the fate of the England squad, a much smaller yet no less fraught drama is unfolding in the background. Like football, it’s a game of two halves; at the end of the day, it’s team play and fancy footwork that go rewarded. But in this arena there are rather more sequins — and some of the players have been known to wear American tan tights.
The BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing has been on air for little over a month now. During that time, as noted in T2 today, a new generation of tango-lovers has been born and some have renewed an existing passion. Bruce Forsyth, whose winning light-entertainment smile remains undimmed after nearly 50 years in the business, has effected a John Travolta-like turnaround in his fortunes, navigating skilfully the fine line between kitsch and cool. His lovely assistant, Tess Daly, has proved more than equal to the job of smiling and saying how nice the dresses are. It has, in all, been a tremendous success.
Ballroom dancing has been riding high since Baz Luhrmann’s 1992 film, Strictly Ballroom. Presumably, the strictly in this new incarnation of Come Dancing is a tribute to that seminal moment of camp high culture. Luhrmann’s sensual visual style and his artistic appreciation of the lurid were the perfect expression of the toupés and tantrums that typify the world of tear-inducingly tight chignons and Viennese waltzes.
Now that such a world is revealed once again Saturday nightly on our screens, it’s a time for wonder. To wonder why the spectacle of two buffed, tanned, grinning individuals whirling to lift music is so compelling. To wonder how such traditionally steamy vertical interpretations of a horizontal act have come to be so successfully sanitised.
It is often the case that those things deemed naff by arbiters of modern culture speak to deeper longings. German wine, for example, has been considered naff for many years because of unfortunate Abigail’s Party associations. In fact, it can be quite delicious; a good bottle of Riesling is a far greater pleasure than a cheap bottle of Chardonnay, and there ought to be nothing wrong with liking it.
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The truth is, ballroom dancing, with all its dressing-up box delights, reminds us of a quainter world of old-fashioned courtships, a world that we think we’ve grown out of, but secretly miss. It speaks to what dancing can and should be: an old-fashioned form of formal courtship, rather than the over-sexualised thrusting we see on MTV. As reality TV plumbs new depths of vulgarity, it’s refreshing to see something so sweetly arch and antique on the up. As Brucie himself might say, didn’t they do well?