The Austrians claim they can teach anyone and anything to dance. They can teach Lippanzer horses to dance the paso doble. So a congenitally uncoordinated and chronically clumsy couple with rudimentary arthritis should have presented few problems.

We were meant to float with grace and dignity but, catching sight of ourselves in the mirror, we looked more like a couple of Daleks in their death throes

The dance Austria is most famous for is the waltz and it is celebrated each year between New Year and Lent, when the elegant and ungainly descend upon Vienna to act out their dreams of grandeur – descending chins-raised down marble staircases and waltzing across vast expanses of polished parquet, under glittering chandeliers to the lilting strains of Herr Strauss.

The waltz has existed in various forms since the 13th century. It was the commoners’ dance and once considered so indecently erotic and vulgar 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. Emperor Josef first opened his palace’s ballrooms to the public in 1773.

Now, through January and February, 450 balls make up the fasching, or carnival season, and over 20,000 hours of carefully orchestrated dancing.

The carnival ball season started on New Year’s Eve with the Imperial Palace at Heidenplatz hosting Le Grand Bal or Kaiserball.

The Palace’s Redoutensale also hosts the Coffee House Owners’ Ball (February 8). Traditionally, couples retire afterwards by fiaker (horse-drawn carriage) to the Café Landtmann.

The Opera Ball is held in the Staatstoper (State Opera House) on Ringstrasse the evening before, with the gentlemen wearing white bow ties and pique waffle fronts. The Philarmonic’s Musikverein also stages a party.

Every profession or guild has its own ball. There is a doctors’ ball (January 26), taxi drivers’ ball, a bankers’ ball, a lawyers’ ball (February 9), and even a chimney sweeps’ ball. All are open to the public.

The two biggest are the Opera Ball, first staged in 1935, and the Emperors’ Ball, held in the former imperial residence, the Hofburg Palace.

Such is their popularity that 3,500 tickets at €300 per head, excluding food and drink, are sold out months in advance. Boxes cost between €16,000 and €40,000.

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 and don’t know a polka schnell from a Viennese schnitzel, Vienna has 30 dance schools offering refresher courses and ball-going weekend breaks.

Having got our kit from the Lambert Hofer stage costume hire shop (www.lamberthofer.at/costume), we set up our training camp at the Imperial Hotel on Vienna’s central boulevard, Ringstrasse. Converted from the Palais Wurtennberg in 1873 by Emperor Franz Josef, it is still the residence of visiting dignitaries.

In the time when we were not eating Imperial-torte (an almond and chocolate confection) and Faschingskrapfen (doughnut filled with apricot jam), 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 the finishing touches to our formal Viennese hand-kisses and courtly bows in the stately Marble Room.

We were lucky that an affected lisp came naturally. My wife’s asphyxiating late 18th-century stays and my cummerbund caused whistling intakes of breath with every movement.

Herr Ellmayer, who runs Vienna’s top dance school and whose family have their own ball, patiently and politely corrected our posture and counted us around the room.

Severe cramp and lack of suitable partners – there were no forklift trucks – stopped me taking to the floor as much as I would have liked

Within a few bars my knickerbockers were severely cramping my style and every time the maestro clapped his hands and said, “Allers waltzen!” (roughly translated: “Let’s see how quickly we can get vertigo”) my wife became more unwieldy. She looked like a Prussian archduchess who had had 18 children – and she felt like she was pregnant with all of them.

We were meant to float with grace and dignity but, catching sight of ourselves in the mirror, we looked more like a couple of Daleks in their death throes.

We did, however, manage something resembling a waltz when Herr Ellmayer slowed the speed of the taped background music until it sounded like something being performed by the Royal Prozac Orchestra.

He assured us that ballroom skills are innate and that with practice, our self-consciousness and stiffness would disappear rather like the bruises on my wife’s shins.

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 that 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 mid-Europeans on casters and performing perfect natural and reverse turns as well as impressive hesitant steps.

Severe cramp and lack of suitable partners – there were no forklift trucks – stopped me taking to the floor as 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 into bed. The ornate ceiling whirled above me. I’d given Vienna a whirl and the capital of 19th-century balls had given me one. But I was glad to be back in the 21st century.

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