WHY do you all want to know about sex?'' the dancer shouted as she turned and ran toward the stage, her skirt and sequins flying. Perhaps because everything can somehow be reduced to sex or death and seeing as ballroom dancing has never been hot on the latter, then it must be sex.
Ballrooms are back on the hippest agenda since the success of the film Strictly Ballroom. Its hilarious and touching tale of backstage shenanigans, cut-throat competition and torrid passion had audiences swooning. Why? Sex, of course.
Paul Mercurio's bulging biceps, pert pecs and oh, so hunky dancing sent viewers into a frenzy. Almost single-handedly he has pushed ballroom back under the spotlight.
Noel Coward, the quintessential English humourist, described dancing as the ''vertical expression of horizontal desire''. How many of you met your partner at a dance or disco, or sealed the fragile seeds of love across a crowded dance floor? The stereotyped image of ballroom is thousands upon thousands of glittering sequins, flesh-coloured body stockings and thick war paint fixing the face into a permanent smile. Not to mention gleaming white teeth, bottle tans and those ridiculous one-piece costumes for men.
As I discovered at the World Professional Ballroom and Latin American Dance event at the Cultural Centre, the old cliche is simplistic and old-fashioned. The costumes might be spangled, and the make-up heavy, but there is also a lot of hard work, dedication and artistry. Seeing them swirl, whirl and twirl up close, it is a fabulous spectacle. But where's the sex? Glenn Wright and Heather Gladding performed the tango, a dance described by the normally unexcitable Urban Council as being ''of raw passion''. Not just passion, but raw, unadulterated, torrid Latin passion. Did they think there is a relationship betweendancing and sex? ''Yes and no,'' Glenn said. ''You see all this dancing going on, but to us it's a job. OK, I may go out and dance with someone in a club to pick her up, but dancing doesn't turn me on sexually. It's a good way to meet someone and a fabulous way for a courtship, but I think it's foreplay rather than the actual thing.'' Latin dances, like the tango, always appeared to come with a category III certificate.
In Strictly Ballroom, it is the paso doble that seals the romance of Scott and Fran. Merely mentioning the names - rhumba, cha-cha, tango, salsa - conjure up images of hot, sweaty writhing bodies.