Glitterball Imperialism: How Strictly Come Dancing Conquered the World One Cha-Cha at a Time
The Glitterball Diplomacy: How Britain’s Sequined Export Became the World’s Most Effective Soft-Power Weapon
By Our Correspondent, Still Recovering from the Shock of Seeing a Former Soviet Defence Minister Cha-Cha-Cha
LONDON—While the Pentagon budgets $842 billion for hardware that goes bang, the Foreign Office has discovered a cheaper force multiplier: spray tan, fake crystals, and a 55-year-old ex-newsreader performing a samba to “Copacabana.” Strictly Come Dancing—BBC One’s annual ritual of glitter, grievous bodily harm to ankles, and public humiliation of B-list celebrities—has quietly become Britain’s most successful cultural export since the notion that queueing is a personality trait.
From Kyiv to Kuala Lumpur, franchised versions of the format now pirouette across 60-odd territories, proving that nothing unites a fractured world quite like watching the locally famous wobble through a paso doble. In Ukraine, “Tantsi z Zirkamy” briefly displaced war coverage on evening bulletins; viewers claimed emotional respite, although cynics noted the ratings spike coincided with rolling blackouts—nothing bonds a populace like shared darkness and a former boxing champion attempting the jive. In Brazil, “Dança dos Famosos” outperforms presidential addresses, a fact the current administration greets with the same forced smile dancers reserve for judges’ critiques.
The genius lies in the show’s adaptable nationalism. India’s “Nach Baliye” stretches the concept to include real-life couples, presumably on the premise that domestic discord is even more entertaining when choreographed. China’s “Strictly Come Dancing” (yes, the name survives untranslated, like “Coca-Cola” or “debt trap”) adds socialist moral scoring: contestants lose points for “bourgeois individualism” if they over-emote during the rumba. Even Iran’s state broadcaster trialled a sex-segregated version until a clerical review concluded that the tango was, quote, “a gateway to Zionism.” The tapes now circulate on Telegram with the same furtive thrill once reserved for contraband Wham! albums.
Meanwhile, the original British edition doubles as a retirement home for empire remnants. Former colonial administrators, Kiwi soap actors, Maltese Eurovision runners-up—all shipped in like diplomatic cargo, weighed down by sequins instead of medals. Their elimination is choreographed geopolitics: the public votes off whoever best symbolises yesterday’s enemy. Last year’s early ousting of a French yachtsman played like Brexit in miniature, only with louder booing and better lighting.
Soft power, though, cuts both ways. Russian hackers allegedly tried to rig 2020’s phone-in votes to secure victory for a patriotic pop star, only to be thwarted by the greater menace: British broadband. The same GRU unit later accused of poisoning Salisbury now faces the indignity of explaining to superiors why they couldn’t swing a rumba. One can almost hear the gulag small-talk: “You failed to sway an election?” “Worse, Sergey. I failed to sway Craig Revel Horwood.”
Globally, the franchise provides a rare barometer of national trauma. After Argentina’s 2018 currency collapse, local producers replaced the mirrorball with a cracked disco bulb—budgetary realism masquerading as aesthetic choice. In Lebanon, the 2020 series was suspended when the port explosion shattered the studio; when it returned, dancers performed amid unrepaired scaffolding, a ratings-friendly metaphor the country could have done without.
And yet, like all good imperial exports, the show mutates in the colonies and sails back distorted. Latin American versions introduced the “dance duel,” a gladiatorial twist now adopted in the UK to satisfy audiences weaned on Netflix brutality. The circle closes: Britain invents polite ballroom, the world adds bloodsport, and we wonder why the empire ended.
As another series foxtrots toward Christmas—complete with its traditional outbreak of norovirus, tabloid adultery, and a Halloween week where someone will inevitably dress as a mummy and dance to “Thriller”—remember this: while summits stall and sanctions sag, the true negotiations happen here, in a Hertfordshire hangar, under $3 worth of sequins. Peace in our time? Unlikely. But peace through Paso? That’s entertainment, and these days entertainment is the only growth industry we’ve got.
So toast the glitterball, that fractured disco moon. It won’t feed the hungry or cool the planet, but for ninety minutes a week it convinces us we’re all in step—even as the floor gives way.
