Bruno Tonioli: The Accidental Global Institution—How One Italian Judge Dances Around Geopolitics
Bruno Tonioli: The Last Global Diplomat We Didn’t Know We Needed
By Our Man in Perpetual Transit
Somewhere between the collapse of multilateral trade talks and the moment a former U.S. president tried to trademark the word “freedom,” Bruno Tonioli pirouetted onto the world stage like a sequined neutron bomb—small, glittering, and impossible to ignore. To the untrained eye he is merely a sixty-something Italian choreographer who shouts “Dah-ling!” at British pensioners learning the paso doble. To the rest of us, he is the closest approximation we have left to a functioning international institution.
Consider the evidence. NATO can’t keep its own members from bickering over submarine recipes, but Bruno can make a Russian oligarch’s daughter and a Glaswegian welder fox-trot in perfect unison on live television. The United Nations releases strongly worded press releases about climate deadlines; Bruno releases a 10-second silent scream that single-handedly reduces global emissions by persuading three coal executives to switch off their generators out of sheer embarrassment. Somewhere in Davos, Klaus Schwab is taking notes on armography.
The genius lies in the business model: instead of summits, there are sparkles. Instead of communiqués, there are cha-cha-chas. The World Bank demands austerity packages; Strictly demands only that you keep your frame and remember to spot your turn. Which would you rather face—a twenty-seven-page memorandum on structural adjustment or Craig Revel Horwood’s raised eyebrow of doom? One destroys livelihoods; the other merely annihilates egos, a far cleaner transaction.
Global soft power used to mean jazz tours and Coca-Cola. Now it means an Italian man in open-to-the-navel shirts broadcasting into 126 territories every Saturday night. China censors Winnie-the-Pooh but allows Bruno to simulcast in Guangdong, presumably on the calculation that his flamboyance is less politically destabilizing than a honey-addicted bear. The Kremlin bans Pride marches yet permits citizens to watch a same-sex tango if it’s scored by a Shirley Bassey cover. Somewhere in a gray office, a cultural attaché files this under “acceptable fabulousness.”
Bruno’s lexicon alone deserves UNESCO protection. Words like “amazing,” “fab-u-lous,” and the ever-versatile “dah-ling” have become transcontinental currency more stable than the euro. Crypto bros promised a borderless medium of exchange; Bruno simply gave the world a shoulder shimmy that translates in every language. Try sanctions-washing that.
Of course, the cynic will object: he’s just a judge on a dance show. But that’s precisely the point. When every other global ritual collapses into performative outrage, here is one ritual that is literally performative and yet somehow less enraging. While COP delegates fly private jets to argue over carbon credits, Bruno takes the Tube to Elstree and still arrives on time. While G7 leaders stage family-photo awkwardness, Bruno wraps both the BBC and Disney+ in a glittery embrace so seamless it might as well be a trade agreement written in rhinestones.
The man even manages the impossible: making Brexit negotiators nostalgic. Remember when the U.K. threatened to walk away from the Erasmus student-exchange program? Within weeks, Strictly announced its first Italian theme week, and suddenly half of Sunderland signed up for evening classes in conversational hand-gestures. Soft power by pas de bourrée.
In darker corners of the globe, despots must watch with unease. Nothing terrers an autocrat like citizens discovering joy is exportable. You can ban newspapers, throttle the internet, disappear dissidents, but how do you block a viral GIF of Bruno fainting into Motsi Mabuse’s arms after an Argentine tango? Firewalls aren’t built for jazz hands.
So let the WTO stall and the Arctic melt; somewhere a 75-year-old accountant in Tokyo is practicing a rumba to “Bésame Mucho” because a shrieking Italian told him to feel the music. If that isn’t a functioning global order, I don’t know what is. We were promised flying cars; we got Bruno Tonioli instead. Frankly, we came out ahead.
