From ballrooms to discos, Austria waltzes in new year (Feature)

Dec 30, 2010, 11:07 GMT

By Albert Otti and Miriam Bandar, dpa Eds: epa file photos include 00000401588263, 00000402026825 =

Vienna (dpa) - New Year's Eve may be a time to look to the future, but in Austria, it is the time when people of all generations celebrate with a waltz from the good old times.

Not any waltz, mind you. No self-respecting Austrian would greet the new year with anything else but Johann Strauss's The Blue Danube, first performed in 1867, and often described as the country's 'secret national anthem.'

Normally, waltzing is associated with the glittering dance floors of Vienna's ball season, which gets into gear after Christmas in the capital's Habsburg-era palaces.

But at the stroke of midnight on December 31, revellers across the country turn to the sound of Strauss, whether they are celebrating in the street or in their living-room.

'What is special about Vienna and Austria is its love of tradition,' said Thomas Schaefer-Elmayer, the director of Vienna's most prestigious ballroom dancing school.

Those who are outside to shoot fireworks often bring a radio, as public broadcaster ORF faithfully supplies the appropriate soundtrack year after year.

Train drivers in commuter trains around Vienna have been known to play the waltz for passengers through the carriages' loudspeaker system.

Even the Praterdome, one of Vienna's biggest discos, cannot make do without The Blue Danube.

'I don't specifically have to instruct the DJs. They play it on the main floor,' the club's manager Thomas Zuechner said. 'This is Vienna, after all.'

'Since its first performance, The Blue Danube has been very popular, well-known and famous,' said Norbert Rubey, the head scholar of the Vienna Institute for Strauss Research.

However nooone - not even Strauss experts, seems to know when the music became the New Year's Eve dance of choice.

But Rubey had an idea about the reason: 'Each melody is better than the other. And the title is well-chosen,' he said, referring to Austria's main river that crosses much of the country.

It was the first piece of music played on television when ORF started broadcasting in 1955, and old news reports show that it was broadcast on New Year's eve as early as 1964.

Rubey also noted that the waltz has been on the programme of every single new year's concert of the Vienna Philharmonic since the orchestra started these concerts in 1939.

Although The Blue Danube is difficult to dance, owing to its slow parts and its length of more than 8 minutes, not only Austrians are eager to give it a spin.

Every year on December 31, the city of Vienna organizes open-air dance classes in the city centre, which are especially popular with tourists.

Dance master Schaefer-Elmayer said he teaches 1,000 people in the art of waltzing between Christmas and New Year, most of them foreigners.

'We have requests non-stop, and we are teaching from 9 in the morning until 10 at night at the moment,' he said.

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