2022 marked the 30th anniversary of Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom. This month, the stage version of the 1992 dance classic arrives in Cardiff, bringing Strictly Ballroom back to its theatrical roots. As a longtime fan, Hannah Collins delves into what makes this dancing phenomenon so timelessly toe-tapping.

Strictly Ballroom belongs on the stage.

Yes, the film-to-musical trend is transparently a moneymaking exercise, and sometimes not even a very good one: just look at trainwrecks like Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark or Lord Of The Rings. Other times, it works like a charm, as in the case of Shrek and Heathers. Strictly Ballroom is one of few that has gone back and forth.

The stage version begat the film and the film then regurgitated a new stage version, starting in its native Australia in 2014 before migrating to the UK and US a couple of years later. It’s this adaptation, Strictly Ballroom: The Musical, that will be at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff this January.

Even before seeing the Cardiff iteration of Strictly Ballroom on stage, it’s easy to think of the film as a musical already, despite there being no singing in it. It relies heavily on a jukebox of musical cues – Love Is In The Air, Time After Time, Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps – so closely married to their visual accompaniments, when you hear them in their own right it’s impossible not to think of Luhrmann’s work. Think swirling sequins, sweaty fake tan and the locked eyes of dancing partners pretending to be in love… and then pretending to pretend to be in love.

Part of the auteur’s Red Curtain trilogy (followed by Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge, representing dance, music and verse, respectively), Strictly Ballroom makes no secret of its theatrical roots – while still being a thoroughly cinematic presentation. Beginning with the opening of a stage curtain, like the classic fairytale book openings of old Disney films, and employing documentary-style interviews at the start, Luhrmann proceeds to tread an interesting line between authenticity and fantasy throughout.

The authenticity comes from the semi-autobiographical element to its premise: Luhrmann studied ballroom dancing from a young age, and his mother owned a dance studio. Like lead character Scott Hastings, the Pan Pacific champ hopeful of dance teacher parents Doug and Shirley, Luhrmann also comes from humble origins – the backwaters of Herons Creek in Sydney. However, his parents’ professions (his mother was also a seamstress; his father ran a cinema) gave him a foundational interest in the arts. He gravitated towards Shakespeare in school, and after early successes acting in film and TV, started his own theatre company in the early 80s – for which he wrote and produced Strictly Ballroom as a play.

Another key influence was someone else’s life experience: that of legendary Australian dancer Keith Bain. If Lurhmann channelled himself into Scott, he most certainly channelled Bain into Scott’s dad. Doug is a meek but mysterious figure lurking at the fringes of his own life, until – inspired by his son’s desire to dance his own steps, a big no-no in competitions – he finds the courage to push his son to pursue the dreams he and his mother abandoned, dancing their way, from the heart.

Bain, similarly, became notorious in Australia’s competitive Latin-American and ballroom scene for dancing non-traditional steps, thanks to his love of modern Austrian master Gertrud Bodenwieser. From Wauchope, a town with a population size of less than 10,000 near where Lurhmann also grew up, Bain danced his way to the very top, holding down a teaching position at the National Institute Of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) for 40 years.

The best dancicals (Footloose, Billy Elliot, Save The Last Dance, Step Up, even Magic Mike) are about social mobility. Their stars are plucky nobodies, usually from working-class or even lesser backgrounds, for whom dance is an escape – a gateway to a better life. And if Bain and Lurhmann’s lives are anything to go by, a route that’s not far removed from the real world. Underdogs are common leads in musical theatre, too: their journey from zero to hero, with maybe a heavy dose of tragedy along the way, making their character sympathetic and their songs uplifting.

In Strictly Ballroom, dance isn’t just about individual improvement, though. It’s a pastime that’s intrinsically communal, even in the competitive scene, crossing generational, cultural and familial divides. Cultural reappropriation of Latin-American dances by largely white professionals and amateurs, for instance, isn’t explicitly called out as it might be in today’s media, which is more literate in political correctness. But it is underscored in the reclamation of the Pasodoble dance by the Hispanic family of Fran, Scott’s love interest and unofficial dance partner. Originally a military march, later associated with bullfighting in Spain, when Scott demonstrates the toothless version of the dance he learned – sanctified by the Pan Pacific Federation – he’s a laughing stock.

Fran’s father and grandmother then open him up to the dance’s true potential: a passionate interplay of short, sharp movements, staccato footsteps, broad gestures and lots of open space. It’s a dance that’s as much a battle for dominance as it is a romantic intertwining of bodies: the woman traditionally wears red, the colour used to enrage bulls, while the man wears bullfighting attire. Scott even starts to learn Spanish, and in embracing Fran’s heritage and family, he embraces the possibility of falling in love with her, as she’s already fallen hopelessly for him and his untameable spirit. It’s the perfect dance to bring two underestimated people together and weaponise against a common enemy.

Scott and his father are repeatedly demonised by said enemy – gammon-faced Federation President and Strictly Ballroom arch-villain Barry Fife, who lords over the region’s dance competitions and is played brilliantly by Aussie star Bill Hunter – for improvisation on the dancefloor. “Crowdpleasing” is the label Fife uses: spitting it out like a dirty word, as if ballroom dance should simply be impressive rather than expressive, for the pleasure of few rather than the many. The reason is monetary. Fife and his Federation make money teaching dancers the steps that’ll win them trophies. There’s no ban on dancing your own, but that doesn’t mean, in Bazzer’s own words, you’ll win. This ensures Fife has authoritarian levels of control on the Pan Pacific competitive scene – an insular world where small-minded men can hold onto massive amounts of power.

Luhrmann tells you exactly what he thinks of men like Fife in the way he films them, keeping the camera close and low on the face – a very unflattering angle, as selfie-takers will know – with high-contrast lighting that reddens the face and makes every pore glisten unpleasantly. Like the world it revolves around, on top of all these more grounded ideas, Strictly Ballroom’s aesthetic is a soap opera of melodrama and fakery: plastered-on smiles, sunbed tans, gravity-defying amounts of hairspray and sucked-in tummies; spotlights, curtains, chiffon and stage doors. The people in it spin in tight and fast circles to maintain the illusion of perfection for high scores, which inevitably bleeds into their actual lives. Shirley Hastings is the clearest example of this, with the multiple pressures of failed dancing dreams, running a studio, being a mother and mentoring a future champion in her own son frequently cracking through her thickly-caked makeup.

The pomp and pageantry of ballroom is weaved into tonal shifts, too. There’s slapstick comedy, larger-than-life characters and – a musical theatre must, this one – the use of dance to express what words can’t: strength, beauty, lust, longing, melancholy, power, anger and joy. Scott dances out his frustrations; Fran dances out her desires. They break and build each other back up through it. Most importantly, they dance for something that isn’t tangible or rewarded by anything but the sheer pleasure of movement.

In the end, though the couple is expelled from the Regional Championship for flagrantly ripping up Fife’s rulebook for a game that was rigged from the start, Scott and Fran literally break down the barriers between the elites of the dancefloor and watching masses, inspiring the audience to join them. The final message of the film is that of reclamation, rebellion and solidarity; satirical, romantic and life-affirming. Go see Strictly Ballroom in Cardiff, whether it’s your first or 30th time.

Strictly Ballroom: The Musical, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Mon 23-Sat 28 Jan. Tickets: £18.50-£70. Info: here

words HANNAH COLLINS