Austrians typically begin learning to waltz in their early teens, so they have plenty of time to get inside the rhythm. It’s one of the fastest dances in the world.” There’s no time to think the steps have to be instinctive. “Two seconds for one whole turn: one, two, three, four, five, six. three steps per second,” Barbara continued. The palace’s Festsaal, or ballroom, alone covers almost 11,000 square feet. Today it fulfills the same role for the democratic Republic of Austria,” reads the official Hofburg website without a trace of irony. “ Until 1918 the extensive palatial complex at the heart of Vienna was the political centre of the monarchy.

The Silvesterball is held in a wing of the Hofburg Palace, once the center of the vast Austro-Hungarian empire, ruled by the Habsburgs. Those romantic period movies wherein the doomed couple waltzes around the majestic ballroom while the scenery blurs were alarmingly accurate I soon discovered. “But it’s much, much faster than the English waltz.” In fact, the steps are the same, but they’re executed in double time, or more, in the Viennese version: 180 beats per minute cruising speed, versus 90. “It’s just turning, turning, turning,” Barbara said reassuringly with a faint smile. Being half-Austrian, attending a ball in Vienna was something I’d always wanted to do, and given the increasingly conflicted social currents in Europe, I felt a nascent sense of urgency-a kind of now or never moment. I’d come to Vienna to learn to waltz in advance-just barely-of The Hofburg Silvesterball, the traditional New Year’s Eve event. The ball season was about to reach fever pitch on New Year’s Eve, before winding down in late spring.

Barbara would handle any in-flight emergency: Viennese waltzing, I was about to learn, happens at jet speed. Barbara was young, statuesque, and authoritative, with brunette hair pulled back neatly and a crisp white button-down blouse tucked into a navy skirt. 'The Viennese waltz is very simple,” explained Barbara Ehrenhauser, my teacher at the esteemed Tanzschule Elmayer in the Innere Stadt, or center city, the cultural heart of Vienna.

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