Shall we dance?

Michael Hoggard gives Rebecca Barry a lesson in ballroom dancing. Picture / Martin Sykes

Kiwi celebrities have been taking ballroom dancing lessons to twirl on for Dancing With the Stars, live on TV One tomorrow night. Rebecca Barry took a turn to find out just how hard it is.

I'm driving to my ballroom dancing lesson and imagining what it's going to be like. In the fantasy I'm wearing a flowing black dress and tangoing like a pro, and my partner looks like Chad Kroeger from Nickelback.

This probably sounds ridiculous to those who have swooned over Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing. But I am not ready to be Jennifer Grey and fall in lust with my instructor. Call me shallow, but if I'm going to break a stranger's foot, the less attractive he is, the better.

Terrifyingly, my dance partner doesn't even have a mullet. His name is Michael, he is 21 and he's what you'd call conventionally hot. This, as it turns out, is the least of my worries. Candy Lane, the host of Dancing with the Stars, has just arrived with my frock. It is not a flowing black dress, although she did heed my request that it not resemble a scarf, a belt or an ice-skating outfit. It is huge. It is bright orange. I'm talking road-cone orange. I could walk out on to Balmoral Rd and start diverting traffic. With all its frilly bits, tassels and diamantes, I'm wondering if it's a loan from Michael's Dancing with the Stars student, Georgina Beyer.

Before we get started, he asks if there are any steps I'd like to learn. Actually, yes. The bit in Dirty Dancing where she jumps into a swan-like shape over his head, I say. Michael looks at me funny. "We'll start with the waltz, I think."

He shows me the basic footwork - no music, just a few easy steps to follow until I've got the hang of it. Right foot back, left foot left, right foot left, left foot back, right foot right, left foot right. It feels unnatural, like playing Twister in high heels.

When Michael says I'm ready to dance with him, like, holding hands and stuff, I turn into the shy girl at the school social. Once, in Madrid, I was pulled on to the dance floor at a salsa club by a sweaty little man who gyrated against me as though he was trying to get me pregnant, and I realised what prudes we are on this side of the world. So I let Michael take my right hand for the dance and assume the position. Embarrassingly, instinct tells me to put my left hand on his back, rather than on his shoulder. I hope this comes from dancing with my little sister as a kid rather than some weird tendency to want to be the man in this partnership. We laugh nervously, and he tells me to place my hand near the top of his arm, "where the muscle should be".

It's a relief to learn that in professional ballroom, you're supposed to arch away from your partner to create an elegant space - this also works as a convenient technique to avoid potential run-ins with garlic fumes. We repeat the footwork, adding in a few fancy turns so we don't slam into the wall, me leaning away without wanting to seem as though I'm repulsed by Michael, then we speed it up and put it to music. Thrilled that what I am doing could actually qualify as dancing, I am now ready to learn the highly technical manoeuvre known as The Turn. This entails Michael spinning in a circle as I run little dainty steps around the outside. How ballroom dancers manage to stay co-ordinated after performing this, I have no idea. Immediately after my first 360 I feel like I've drunk a warm fish milkshake, and there are diamantes all over the floor.

Even so, I won't lie and say I suck at this ballroom thing. I am actually not too bad. When Michael says I am doing rather well, I consider testing his expertise by launching unannounced into the swan. Imagine that - dance instructor killed by entertainment reporter who thought she was Jennifer Grey.