Airdate: Ballroom Rules

Next week ABC’s Artscape screens a documentary about same-sex ballroom dancers who have been banned by the ballroom dancing’s governing body in Australia.

Don’t they remember seeing Strictly Dancing‘s same-sex dance duo back in 2005?

Ballroom dancing is the ultimate traditional sport. With a reputation for being overtly heterosexual and inflexible rules that bar same-sex couples from competitions, it should be the last sport on earth in which gay men and lesbians would participate. But at a small studio in Melbourne a passionate group of same sex ballroom dancers is defying the rules.

Anny Salerni is the owner of Melbourne’s only gay and lesbian ballroom dancing studio, and is the driving force behind the art of same-sex ballroom dancing in Australia. Anny has been threatened in the past by the governing body for ballroom dancing in Australia but she is determined to provide a safe space for her students to dance.

Banned from the mainstream, Anny and her students have limited opportunity to compete. So they must look overseas to find bigger competitions in order to improve. The world’s biggest same sex dancesport competition is about to be held at the Gay Games in Cologne, Germany. Anny and her students make the decision to travel half way around the world to take on the world’s best same-sex dancers.

Ballroom Rules follows Anny and her students through the highs and lows of their training as they prepare for the 2010 Gay Games.

Tuesday 8 November at 10pm on ABC1.