This Life magazine, late 2001: Feature on ballroom dancing

I could have danced all night and then some

They say exercise is like a drug releasing endorphins which make you feel fantastic and keep you coming back for more. With ballroom dancing, its a triple-whammy. Not only is it highly addictive on an endorphin level, but its an exhilarating meeting of music and social interaction. For cardiovascular exercise its second only to swimming, and it can also be heart-stoppingly sensual and romantic. I can honestly say Im in heaven when I take the floor. Its escapism of the sexiest kind.

While latin dancing has become hugely popular in its own right, I prefer the gracefulness of ballroom dancing (the two are usually taught side by side).

My favourite dance is the slow foxtrot, an elegant, gliding dance which, if done well, gives the impression of truly floating across the dance floor. While it looks easy to the casual observer, it requires intense control of posture, balance and, above all, timing. To me, the beauty of the dance is its slowness that feeling of lagging sensuously behind the beat, teasing it, yet always just managing to catch it. The slowfox is also danced to the most expressive and inspiring music. All of Fred and Gingers routines were to foxtrot compositions and all the best-loved Gershwin and Cole Porter songs performed by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald are foxtrots.

Dancing the slowfox is like stepping back in time and belonging to a much more stylish, romantic era, where women wore beautiful evening gowns for an evenings dancing, and men wore tails. A night of exotic dancing in the trendiest London nightclub, for me, will never match the sensuality I feel when Im part of that bygone world. I feel more alive than in any circumstance; all my senses are heightened. Above all, I feel like a woman.

The latin dances (cha-cha-cha, rumba, jive, salsa and mambo) offer a completely different feeling, a raw raunchiness that sends tremors along every part of the body. Argentine tango has the same effect. Its hot and sleazy, and requires a lot of intimacy with your dance partner lots of rubbing your legs up and down the mans body. If youre with the right person, theres no experience like it. The skimpy, professional costumes designed for these dances are like that for a reason. Theres no doubt, this kind of dancing can be better than sex.

The ultimate experience to me, though, would be to go to one of the prestigious Vienna balls, where the dancers don the more traditional ballroom finery and arrive in horse-drawn carriages, wrapped in long capes, revealing only a glittering dance slipper. The Cinderella experience, you could call it. I nearly got a chance to go to one of these balls once, but high society living does not come cheap and I couldnt afford the 2,000 the short trip would have set me back.

We do get chance to dress up for Christmas and summer balls, thrown by the dance halls Ive come to frequent, but on a more casual basis Ive seen men dancing in their work suits after a day at the office, and women in jeans. Not quite the image were used to, but at least it dispels some of the myths created by Come Dancing - of hairspray excess and hideous concoctions of fluorescent satins and feathers.

When I decided to see if my happy childhood memories of ballroom and latin dancing could be rekindled following my divorce three years ago, I was very pleasantly surprised by how alive this world still was if you looked in the right places. Maybe I was lucky, living in London, but I stumbled on a new, readymade social scene of people my own age and mentality, all having a great deal of fun - and without a meringue dress in sight.

The split from my first husband had been amicable, but had blown apart some tight group friendships, and I suddenly found that, as a newly single woman whose friends were all in couples, I no longer fitted in. So what was it I wanted for myself, now that there was no-one else to consider?

Dancing! My aunt and uncle had taken up ballroom dancing a few years before, and couldnt stop talking about it; they were truly obsessed. Their enthusiasm was catching. I had done some ballroom as a youngster - how we had whirled and floated in our boob-tubes and floaty skirts, on a shiny wooden floor under a sparkling disco ball! I wanted that back.

I fixed on a beginners class at Gwenethe Walshe Dance Studio, a ballroom school near Baker Street. Id forgotten all the steps, but it didnt matter here was a room of people of all shapes and sizes throwing caution to the wind, single-mindedly focused on becoming modern-day Fred and Gingers. I couldnt wait to catch up.

I took private lessons to further my progress, enrolling for an hour a weeks private tuition after work. (I wasnt to know then that Id end up marrying my instructor, but such is the power of dancing!). But even lessons werent enough I hungered for more. I had become a ballroom dancing bore. I ate it, slept it and would have injected it if I could. Colleagues at work were bemused; friends at home were simply tired of hearing about it. I sought out Web sites, email chat rooms, always in search of new venues, new potential partners. Seven nights a week wouldnt have satisfied me.

Notre Dame Hall on Leicester Square became my favourite haunt. So desperate to get more of my drug, I went alone one night, latched on to a group, and that was that. The thing about dancing is that, like other clubs, everyone is bound together tightly by their common passion. If you can move to the music and dont have body odour (a hazard of the ballroom world), youre in, and youll never be short of a partner.

And of course, when youre clasped together tightly in a romantic waltz hold, or are being passionately twirled and embraced in a sultry rumba, friendships soon become intimate. (As I say, I married my dance teacher.) Its not always romantic, of course, but whats odd is that the plainest man can be transformed into the most handsome, charming, alluring creature if he can make you feel beautiful and graceful under the ballroom lights. You have to try very hard not to fall in love.

Competitions were almost compulsory! It was an additional money-earner for the dance school and it gave the pupils new zeal. As exams and competitions loomed, we all became more earnest - notebooks came out, new shoes were purchased, posture would improve. Head back!, Pull that stomach in!, Where is your weight? the teachers would bark, half joking, but half serious too the schools reputation was at stake, and they all had their own individual bets on as to which teacher would get the best results from their students.

Competition costumes would be weird and wonderful, a step closer to the images we all grew up with. Well, wed be cheating ourselves if we didnt look the part (while publicly we shunned the old-fashioned images of ballroom dancers, secretly we all wanted a chance to dress up like that). Ballroom outfits were full and flouncey, latin outfits tiny and revealing. And of course we all wore numbers on our back, just like in the films.

Careful not to shock the judges with fancy, non-federation, crowd-pleasing steps (Strictly Ballroom forgive me), we all stood our tallest and were careful not to toe-lead, or lower both heels at the same time. The object, after all, was to come home with as many tacky trophies as we could fit on our mantelpieces. (My small triumph was coming first for bronze-level Argentine Tango at my first competition. The elation was as though Id won a national prize.)

Three years on, my passion hasnt waned. I live in the French countryside now, where it isnt so easy to get to social dances. I miss it acutely. So were going to start our own classes, here at our home. Weve already got a functional dance studio because we got married here recently and needed somewhere to perform our wedding dance (a few people cried that night when Nicholas took me in his arms for a specially choreographed waltz to Nat King Coles Around the World).

The ultimate plan is to host dancing holidays, aimed at the sort of people I met in London, and at the Japanese who are passionate about ballroom and spend a fortune travelling to Europe for crash courses with reputable teachers. Were hoping well be able to lure some of them over here for lessons in tranquil surroundings, ending a weeks course with a proper black-tie ball.

If, like me, you love old black and white films, and hanker after the life well never know, where men were debonair and women were born knowing the foxtrot, ballroom dancing offers a chance to taste that world. It brings together people who share that same longing, and for a few exhilarating hours you can be truly swept off your feet in a very magical environment. Happy isnt the word!