An amateur dance championship in Blackpool may not sound like the most hotly-contested event in the world, but Kiss Me Quickstep, a new play, focuses on the pressure and competitiveness behind the glitzy costumes and fake tan.

Dancer and choreographer Alan Burkitt - who has worked on a host of reality dance television programmes - is one of the main draws in Amanda Whittington’s production, which centres around the performance and lives of three dance couples at the seaside ballroom competition.

Clad in the artificial orange stuff in a break between rehearsals, Burkitt says that one of his colleagues on the Strictly Come Dancing team has first-hand experience of the “insane pressure” involved in ballroom dance.

“A lot of the pressure is on how you look, who has the best dress, that kind of thing. Grooming is such a big thing in that world, which the play reflects - the girls are half-naked and the boys have their chests out. Some of them had to be waxed, of course.”

Burkitt’s character and his partner are reigning champions of ballroom and Latin dance, and keen to let everybody know about it.

He says the audience will not initially take to his “horrendous” character, but when things start to fall apart for the hitherto successful dancer more sympathy might be afforded him.

“He’s very difficult and competitive - that’s not too hard for me to portray,” he jokes.

Having started dancing at the age of five - “I was bopping around the kitchen so much that my mum got mad and said I should go to dance classes” - Burkitt grew up participating in championships.

“At that time, it felt like they weren’t so tense,” he says. “I think nowadays, because there is so much reality television about dance, kids grow up with that sense of competition. There is a lot of pressure on them.”

A programme like Strictly Come Dancing, on which Burkitt does choreographic work, hits that precarious balance between fun and genuine competitiveness. Burkitt says that participants on the show often start off in a ‘”jokey” frame of mind, before the competitive edge kicks in.

“What’s amazing is when you get a sports star who are thinking ‘this is all a bit flouncy’ when they first come in. When they start getting into it - and it is addictive - the winning mentality comes to the fore.”

Unsurprisingly to any Strictly fans, Burkitt surmises that “the people who have done a lot of dancing aren’t often the ones who win the hearts of the British public - we love an underdog.”

The narrative viewpoint of Kiss Me Quickstep flits around between three couples; as well as the haughty champs, there is also the girl with the pushy father who teams up with a Russian man, and a financially-stretched married couple.

Artistic director of Eastbourne Theatres, Chris Jordan, says that husband-wife dance teams touring around the world are quite common. Indeed, the whole scene can be a very familiar one. “It’s a case of seeing the usual teams in various competitions and thinking, ‘ah, so and so are here, we’ll never beat them.”’ The Winter Garden was restructured to assume the appearance of a traditional ballroom hall, with banks of seating around the edges of the venue and the dancefloor in the middle. This means that the entire floor is effectively the stage, so the audience can see dance teams limbering up on the sidelines and preparing for their big moment. “That set-up makes it immersive,” says Jordan.

Dance afficionados will be satisfied with the range of styles on show, too. “We do the waltz, tango, quickstep and more,” says Burkitt. “I’ve wanted to do quickstep for a while, so I’m ticking that off the list now.”

Edwin Gilson

Kiss Me Quickstep Winter Garden, Eastbourne, Friday, July 29, to Sunday, August 14, 7.45pm, some matinees at 2.30pm, matinees £16, evenings £21, call 01323 412 000 or visit www.eastbournetheatres.co.uk.