Fancy footwork: Kristina Rihanoff on Strictly Come Dancing . My husband is holding me in his arms, gazing fondly into my eyes and leading me across the floor in a series of sinuous moves that, quite frankly, I never imagined he could make. Such a moment never seemed possible because, like many women, I have been made a wallflower by a can’t-dance, won’t-dance partner. We never even had an opening waltz at our wedding 30-odd years ago. David, my husband, doesn’t so much as bop at parties. However, with the help of Strictly Come Dancing’s Kristina Rihanoff, we are getting the chance to take to the floor together – and in the process improve our fitness and our general mood, and even make our marriage healthier. Dressing up and taking your partner’s hand to dance à deux is catching on all over again, thanks to the huge success of the TV dance show. ‘Learning dance steps allows couples to enjoy the closeness of each other and creates a sense of trust as well as intimacy,’ says Kristina, who has partnered celebrities from newscaster John Sergeant to pop singer Simon Webbe on the TV show. ‘Some therapists suggest it as a form of marriage counselling. It allows men to lead and feel in charge again, and women to feel they are being taken care of by their partner. ‘Plus it releases endorphins as your heart rate goes up.’ And so I found myself relearning the essential 12 steps of salsa for the first time since I did the cha-cha-cha at Victor Sylvester’s Saturday morning ballroom classes for children, decades ago. Dancing was in my blood: my father danced his teens and 20s away and became an eight-times ballroom dancing champion. Kristina is giving David and me a taste of the weekend workshops she’s running at Champneys health spa over the next few months. But I find myself wondering how her students are going to cope with a class lasting three-quarters of an hour when we are knocked out after ten minutes of practice. ‘I feel like a robot,’ grumbles David, who has zero ballroom experience but bucks up when Kristina puts Santana on the sound system. He is musical – playing guitar – but his sense of rhythm does not extend to his feet, which Kristina says is surprisingly common. As for me, although I spent two years of my teens jiving in Soho discos, learning specific steps 40 years on is a discipline I’m finding taxing. It’s a more demanding workout, in fact, than anything I did on a brain-improvement programme I recently attended. ‘You need to focus absolutely,’ explains Kristina, who says the extreme attention needed to learn a sequence is good for improving mood as well as fitness. ‘When I started partnering Simon he was extremely down, but felt the dancing had a very positive effect. ‘Like yoga, ballroom dancing takes you out of yourself; you can’t think of anything else while you’re practising, so it takes you away from your everyday worries.’ Masterclass: Anthea dances with Kristina as David looks on. The Strictly star says learning dance steps together creates a sense of trust as well as intimacy between couples . A recent study in Poland suggested that dancing can elicit an improvement in mood. Another soon-to-be-published study shows that learning to dance improves leg muscle architecture in older women, while dementia patients were found to feel much better after taking a Latin ballroom class for a 2013 study. The aerobic effect is obviously a plus for weight loss; Kristina says John Sergeant lost more than two stone while training with her for an unimaginable eight hours a day. I say ‘unimaginable’ because after 15 minutes, my reluctant partner and I are so winded that we wonder whether we can even survive till the end of our session. I blame my shortness of breath on the need to accomplish a full underarm twirl in just three steps, every minute or so. Even so, given that our other steps involve only a gentle rocking back and forth and bringing feet together, my heart rate is raised in half the time it takes when I walk at nearly 4mph on the treadmill. David becomes furious as he keeps forgetting to switch to the side-step that kicks off the next part of the salsa sequence. Kristina reassures us that we are no worse than any beginners, and half an hour later we’re congratulating ourselves on remembering all 18 steps of our sequence and even keeping time with the music. I could see myself going on to tackle the foxtrot, the quickstep and tango. But first, I need a partner – the one I’ve got says he prefers his salsa with avocado on a nice tortilla. At least Champneys will guarantee everyone who books Kristina’s course someone to dance with. Strictly Ballroom weekends cost from £395 and take place on March 28-29 and May 22-24. For more information, go to champneys.com.
Strictly Come Dancing’s Kristina Rihanoff says learning dance steps creates sense of trust as well as intimacy between couples . Some therapists even suggest dancing as a form of marriage counselling . This is because it allows men to lead and women to feel they are being taken care of, Kristina says .