The Austrians claim they can teach anyone and anything to dance. They can teach Lipizzaner horses to dance the paso doble. So a congenitally uncoordinated couple like my wife and I should have presented few problems. The Austrians are a patient people.
The dance Austria is most famous for is the waltz, which is celebrated each year between New Year and Lent, when the elegant and ungainly descend upon Vienna for the "Ball Season" to act out their dreams of grandeur - waltzing smilingly across vast expanses of polished parquet, under glittering chandeliers to the lilting strains of Herr Strauss. Theoretically.
The waltz has existed in various forms since the 13th century. It probably evolved from the landler, a popular dance in the 18th century.
The new hip-to-hip, chest-to-shoulder dance was once considered so indecently erotic and vulgar by the straight-laced gavotte-trotters that anyone who taught it was hunted down as a pervert by the Church. The Vienna waltz itself was created by the Strauss family and the first Viennese Opera Ball was held in the Musikverein in 1873. Now, 300 balls make up the Fasching season.
Every profession or guild has its own ball. There is a taxi drivers' ball, a bankers' ball, a lawyers' ball, a coffee house owners' ball and even a chimney sweeps' ball. All are open to the public. The two biggest are the Opera Ball held in the Staatsoper (State Opera House) and the Emperors' Ball, held in the former imperial residence, the Hofburg Palace. Such is their popularity 3 500 tickets at £200 (R1 600) a head, excluding food and drink, are sold out months in advance.
Black tails for the men and ball gowns for the ladies are de rigueur although period costume down to the buckled shoes and powdered Tibetan ox-hair wig can be hired for the masked balls. A Viennese Ball is the ultimate fancy dress party. Especially, if you go dressed, as my wife and I did, as Mr and Mrs Mozart.
For those who aren't naturally light on their feet, Vienna has 30 dance schools. Having got our kit from a stage costume hire shop, we set up our training camp at the Imperial Hotel on Vienna's central boulevard, Ringstrasse. We practised our "step, side and togethers" as well as our supercilious sneers on the Grand Staircase, worked on our Hapsburgian haughtiness in the gilded ballroom and our formal handkisses and courtly bows in the stately Marble Room.
We were lucky an affected lisp came naturally. My wife's asphyxiating 18th-century stays and my cummerbund caused whistling intakes of breath with every movement.
Herr Ellmayer, who runs Vienna's top dance school, patiently and politely corrected our posture and counted us around the room.
Within a few bars my knickerbockers were severely cramping my style and every time the maestro clapped his hands and said: "Allers waltzen!", my wife became more unwieldy. She looked like a Prussian duchess who had had 18 children - and she felt like she was pregnant with all of them.
The fact that Johann Strauss the Younger, who composed over 470 waltzes, couldn't actually waltz himself was some consolation as we set off for the ball, the highlight of our weekend. Unfortunately, the taxi was too small for both of us in our regalia and I had to make my own way. I ended up miles off course in Prater Park where, dressed up as Vienna's favourite son, Mozart, I was heckled and subjected to demeaning wolf-whistles. I was accosted by two buskers who wanted me to conduct them in a special outdoor gala performance of "Wiener Glut"and further delayed by tourists wanting a snapshot to prove Mozart had risen from the grave. My wig was mobbed by crows for most of the way, too.
Arriving at the ball, I sat on the sidelines watching my wife being whisked around by a succession of suave Europeans. Severe cramp and lack of suitable partners stopped me taking to the floor much as I would have liked. So I sat the night out in front of several bottles of other people's champagne. At first light, I fell fully clothed in to bed.
The ornate ceiling whirled above me. I'd given Vienna a whirl and it had given me one. But I was glad to be back in the 20th century.