My small daughter is very taken with the BBC dancing competition, ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. She had some sort of religious experience watching the Halloween special last season and since then she’s watched every episode available through iPlayer approximately 17 times each. As well as the Halloween special, her other favourite is the 100 years of the BBC celebration week, which is why, at five years old, she can sing the Grange Hill theme tune and thinks all sports are “like Grandstand”.
Last weekend I decided to dig out the DVD of Baz Luhrmann’s best film, the 1992 cult classic, Strictly Ballroom. I knew she wouldn’t watch the whole thing, but I thought at the very least she’d come and watch the dancing parts, and I’d be able to enjoy everything else.
I’ve never been significantly moved by anything that has happened on SCD but I can tell you that Strictly Ballroom was a particularly important film to me as a child. In fact, along with The Princess Bride, it’s one of the only films that I know by heart, frame by frame. You show me any scene in Strictly Ballroom and I know what the next person is going to say and the intonation they’re going to use to say it. That soundtrack is imprinted on the whorls of my ears like grooves on a vinyl. A bit of musicality, please!
I’m not a re-watcher by nature and even in this, my most extreme example, I’m certainly not talking about having watched it daily, or weekly, or anything close to that. The script is just that good. The performances are that iconic. I guess I watched it just enough times, at the time I was at my most receptive to memory-making, and now I’m stuck with it. It’s no burden. It’s possibly nearly twenty years since I watched it last. The DVD is ancient, it doesn’t even have a menu screen. It occurs to me now, that it might never have even been watched before. I got it when my VHS (bought ex-rental from the video shop) became obsolete; not because I needed to keep watching it, I just needed to know that I could. I felt I knew it so well,1 I didn’t really need to rewatch it; it wouldn’t be different, and maybe, someone whispered, it might not be as good…
*Cue the music*
Ballroom dancer Scott Hastings is all set to win the Southern Districts Championships with his dance partner, Liz. It was his year, it was his year, it was his year! It! Was! His! Yeeaaar! But during the competition Scott deviates from their routine with ‘crowd-pleasing’ steps that scupper his chance of taking the trophy.
Liz is distraught and breaks up the partnership for someone who’ll stick to the rules. What’s gotten into Scotty? His mother is heartbroken! He’s worked his whole life towards this! You can’t win the Pan Pacific Grand Prix dancing your own steps!!!
It's all hands on deck at the dance school to find Scott a new partner, but he’s doing secret practice sessions with beginner Fran, who also likes to dance her own steps. As the pair grow closer, devastating family secrets start to bubble up from the past. Scott’s father was once also on the cusp of Pan Pacific Championship, but he, too, had a rebellious streak when it came to pre-approved steps. Scott has to decide what’s more important; winning the Pan Pacific Grand Prix or … er… living a life in fear!!!!
If I’m making this sound bad, that’s on me. You have to trust me that you’ll only understand how high these stakes are when you see Shirley Hastings crumple to the floor in her jewelled cocktail dress, or when Liz performs one of her mirror-shattering screams, or when Barry Fife’s mahogany face turns royal purple with rage.
I just cannot express how seriously these people take dancing, and how un-ridiculous it feels to be right there with them. I think, perhaps, the final sequence (yes, the Latin American Finals at the Pan Pacific Grand Prix2) is one of the most exhilarating things I’ve ever seen. If I think too hard about Scott sliding across that floor, I will cry into this keyboard, right now.
What was really interesting to me on the re-watch is how the romance element is on the back-burner. I only mention this because I was listening to a podcast3 about Dirty Dancing (euw, not MY dancing film!) and there was a lot of talk about the sexual awakening aspect of being a young viewer discovering dancing-and-romancing films. For all the ways Scott looks good in a vest, Strictly Ballroom is not a sexy film.4 I wondered if perhaps I had distanced myself from that part of it because I was seven years old and was just more interested in Fran getting a sparkly dress than a snog, but no, even on the re-watch, it’s just not the thrust (ball change on the fourth, Wayne) of the film. I couldn’t wait for her Fransformation (that’s a typo but I’m keeping it) into a Real Ballroom Dancing Babe with sequins on her face and a crunchy hair-do.
One of my favourite scenes is when Fran’s father shows Scott the real Paso Doble, and we have close-up of his tiny perfect heeled suede boots as they hammer steps into the floorboards so fast you go temporarily blind. Like my daughter is now, I was completely enchanted by the idea of shoes with heels (espesh on a man). Could life get any better than wearing high heels? Isn’t it a tragedy that I grew up to be a person who wears flats5 after all. That I never wore a dress with feathers that might float off into the air as I spun about. That I don’t regularly affix gems to my temples. I know I could, and honestly, I’m happy with my decision not to, I’m just acknowledging that on some level I have let down the girl I was when I was watching this film those 8 or 38 times.
Because this is meant to be a letter about writing, I wondered if Strictly Ballroom had any effect on my own work. Sure, it’s a masterclass in dialogue, memorable characters, world-building and a bloody good story, but I can’t pretend much of that has rubbed off on me. It did occur to me though, that I carried a part of Scott and Fran’s spirit into the teen novel I wrote, which published last year. In my book, two characters essentially retire from (athletics) competition in order to run their own race (dance their own steps). They prioritise their own bodies, focussing on how they feel rather than what they can achieve. The third character, a beginner, has no interest in ‘winning’, she’s there to find out what she’s capable of, for herself. My Three Girls definitely demand ‘New Steps’ along their journey, and it’s possible that I was channelling that deeply invigorating elevator music with its triumphant trumpeting as they complete their own admittedly less sparkly but equally sweaty Pan Pacific Grand Prix (a 5K run).
I’m not going to urge you to go and immediately watch Strictly Ballroom because perhaps (perhaps, perhaps) it won’t have the same impact if you aren’t seven years old the first time you see The Fairy Princess of the Dance Floor, Miss Tina Sparkle. It might not be as significant to you when Just Fran (Fran, you know, the girl who fell) squirms her socks-and-shoes feet when Scott gets her in a Basic Hold for the first time. You might not feel the genuine threat of Dance Federation President Barry Fife.
I don’t want to promise you my experience because you might not get it, but I can tell that this film absolutely holds up. It’s a thrill. It’s a delight. The script is objectively tremendous, the performances are perfection, the editing of this film is a work of true genius. I don’t know if this is a film that students watch in film school but I feel like there are huge lessons to be learned from how tight this film is. There isn’t a moment out of place,6 and it’s so bloody funny. It’s dramatic and a little bit romantic but mostly it’s just off the charts glorious. If you’ve never answered the question "What do you want?" with "I want Ken Railings to walk in here and say Pam Short’s broken both her legs, and I want to dance with you" then I’m just thrilled for you that you might one day yet.
I can’t know how you’ll react, with whatever dance-film affiliation you already have, if you sit down to watch Strictly Ballroom for the first time today. But what I can tell you about it how my daughter reacted, because it moved me. She had flitted in and out while the film was playing, stopping to watch dance sequences and comment on costumes then picking up her Lego or colouring when there was too much conversation.7 As the ending neared she could sense the escalation and she clambered onto the sofa to cuddle up to me. She knew this was something she wanted to pay attention to...
Like any normal human being with eyes and feelings, she was completely spellbound by the finale,8 and as the silent tears poured down my face I wondered at what age I’d started crying happy tears. When the credits started to roll and she realised we weren’t in an Australian arena watching Couple Number 100, Scott Hastings and Partner at the Pan Pacific Grand Prix - that the rollercoaster of emotions we’d just hurtled through in the last eight minutes were over, she also suddenly burst into unexpected tears. She couldn’t explain why she was upset! Nothing was hurting! She loved the dancing! She didn’t know why was crying!! I didn’t really know how to explain it either, that’s just sometimes what happens when you are really, really, uplifted.
It’s just a lot, to suddenly feel so much. All I could do was agree.
That’s just… Strictly Ballroom!
Is this me not learning from Rebecca, again? I think a straight re-watch is slightly different. Do you re-watch things? Do you re-read things? Re-re-really??
I just love saying these words.
Sentimental Garbage, one of my go-to podcasts! Highly recommend!
It’s a film about rhinestones.
flats for the subway?
I know they abandon the ‘documentary’ aspect of the format too early but it’s really funny in the beginning so we don’t mind! It just works. It just does!
With regard to the PG rating of the film - there are some casual swears, we ignored them.
Which I could link you a clip to here but it really should be viewed in the context of the rest of the film to unleash its full power.
Show Me Your Paso Doble!
I was a few years older than you when I watched it for the first time but I wholeheartedly second everything you've said! I was already muttering "I want Ken Railings to walk in here and say Pam Short's broken both her legs and I wanna dance with you" [that was unexpected] when I saw the subject! I have nothing to add, it's just a truly brilliant film. "I have to help Wayne with his bogo pogo"
Such a beautiful film and reading this made me feel like I was watching it for the first time again. 😍