From Havana to High-Definition: Janette Manrara and the Global Glitterball Economy

A Cuban-American dancer glides across a British ballroom, watched by 11 million Britons clutching their cups of tea and existential dread, while WhatsApp groups from Manila to Mexico City ping with the same question: “Who the hell is Janette Manrara, and why is my algorithm suddenly obsessed?” Welcome to the 21st-century fame centrifuge, where a performer born in Miami to parents who once dreamed of visas becomes a trans-Atlantic cultural export—proof that globalization now moves faster than any immigration officer ever could.

Janette Manrara’s career is a case study in how soft power migrates through television formats. After cutting her teeth on “So You Think You Can Dance” in the United States—a country where the arts budget is routinely outspent by the Pentagon’s coffee allowance—she hopped the pond to join “Strictly Come Dancing,” the BBC’s sequined juggernaut that single-handedly keeps the UK’s rhinestone mines in business. There she spent eight seasons as a professional dancer, gamboling past Brexit referendums, prime-ministerial implosions, and three different Conservative chancellors, all of whom probably fantasized about replacing the National Health Service with a nationwide cha-cha-cha competition to distract the masses.

The international significance? Consider the numbers: “Strictly” is sold to more than 60 territories, from Australia’s “Dancing with the Stars” to Vietnam’s “Bước Nhảy Hoàn Vũ.” Every time Manrara executes a well-timed pivot, intellectual-property lawyers in Los Angeles quietly high-five over licensing fees large enough to bail out a medium-sized Eurozone nation. Meanwhile, her Instagram following—hovering just north of 600 k—spans 178 countries, meaning that while the United Nations dithers over climate accords, Janette is uniting humanity one grapevine step at a time, or at least giving them a shared GIF to forward instead of arguing about tariffs.

Of course, the cynic in us (and if you’re reading Dave’s Locker, that’s most of you) notes that global celebrity now operates like a multilevel marketing scheme. Manrara’s 2021 pivot from dancer to presenter on “Strictly: It Takes Two” coincided with the post-pandemic realization that we will all eventually be replaced by more charming holograms of ourselves. The gig offers a masterclass in post-industrial reinvention: if the world stops needing your pirouettes, simply sell your personality in 30-second segments sandwiched between adverts for sofa finance. Call it the gig economy en pointe.

Yet there is something almost poignantly utopian beneath the glitter. In an era when nations weaponize nostalgia, Manrara’s story is a throwback to a simpler aspiration: move somewhere new, work brutally hard, and maybe land a job where your biggest risk is a wardrobe malfunction on live television. It’s the same promise once whispered by Ellis Island, now repackaged with spray tans and a mock-Tudor set outside London. The difference is that today the Statue of Liberty holds a glitterball instead of a torch, and instead of huddled masses, we get curated content creators.

Her forthcoming world tour—aptly titled “Remember to Dance”—will touch down in 27 cities, including Dubai, Singapore, and a one-night-only stop in Reykjavik, presumably because Iceland’s geothermal plants need something to do between volcanic eruptions. Ticket prices range from “mildly extortionate” to “you could’ve funded a small coup in Central America,” but audiences will pay. Why? Because in a planet lurching from supply-chain crisis to energy shortage, watching two humans execute a perfect foxtrot offers a three-minute reprieve from contemplating our collective doom. Bread and circuses, but make it ballroom.

So when Janette Manrara sashays into your social-media feed tonight, spare a thought for the geopolitical choreography behind the scenes. She is both product and producer of a world where borders are porous for entertainment but fortified for refugees, where culture travels faster than compassion, and where the most reliable export the West still manufactures is escapism. If that leaves a bitter taste, just do what the rest of us do: mute the sound, watch the footwork, and pretend the music isn’t the slow thud of late-stage capitalism keeping time.