‘Screaming girls chased me down the street’: how we made Strictly Ballroom

What happened

According to The Guardian’s source item, ‘Screaming girls chased me down the street’: how we made Strictly Ballroom, ‘A big dude came up to me and said, “My wife dragged me kicking and screaming to see your movie – and it was the best thing she’s ever done”’ Baz Luhrmann was this cool guy two years ahead of me at NIDA, the drama school in Sydney. When I graduated, I joined his theatre company Six Years Old and the play of Strictly Ballroom came out of that. It was inspired by Keith Bain, who taught movement at the school. He was a ballroom-dancer who had left Australia for South America in the 1950s then came back with these shocking new steps. We talked a lot in rehearsals about the paso doble, and from that came Fran’s Spanish immigrant background. I thought up the name Frangipani because Sydney has frangipani trees everywhere. On my walk to rehearsals, I’d often pick one of the flowers to put in my hair. Continue reading…

Context

The development sits in VINI’s Culture file for readers following arts, entertainment, fashion, film, music, celebrity, and the business of culture. The original report is linked so readers can check the source account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The source item is dated 2026-06-08T14:02:07+00:00.

What to watch

Open questions include whether primary sources issue follow-up statements, whether local or market impacts become clearer, and whether additional reporting changes the timeline or adds material context.

Source

Primary source: ‘Screaming girls chased me down the street’: how we made Strictly Ballroom via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.