Anna Sorokin puts her best foot forward

This week has seen the arrival of not one but two announcements about who will take part in televised dancing contests. This is no surprise. They are, to all intents and purposes, the same show filmed on either side of the Atlantic. Until recently they even shared a couple of judges, shuttling them across the ocean as quickly as possible like delicate veal on a plane. If you are a British reader, this is Strictly season (as the BBC show Strictly Come Dancing is known by its fans). If you are a US reader, then it is Dancing with the Stars season. Strictly announced its arrival with a variety of videos that all seemed to be filmed through a pink filter, perhaps with the idea that the brighter the lights and the shinier the sparkle, then the sooner viewers would be dazzled out of remembering the attendant scandals – dancers kicking celebrities, dancers spitting at celebrities – and the audience would want to jump on the ‘Strictly bus’.

In the United States, however, there was a much more proportionate announcement of the Dancing with the Stars line-up. One can see how there is an advantage to keeping one’s powder dry when there are stars such as Tori Spelling and Eric Roberts involved. But Rakewell’s attention was caught by one name in particular. Anna Sorokin, perhaps better known as Anna Delvey, the convicted con artist – who prefers to think of herself as a performance artist – is to appear on the show. Sorokin, as you will remember, had ambitions to create an arts club and foundation. She wanted to have it wrapped by the Christos and present new works by the likes of Doris Salcedo. Her ambitions were only restricted by her wealth and this she decided to overcome by fraudulently winkling it out of her friends, banks and luxury hotels.

Bejewelled for Dancing with the Stars. Photo: Disney/Andrew Eccles

Sorokin – like that other fraudster currently the talk of New York thanks to the US release of Orlando Whitfield’s All That Glitters, Inigo Philbrick – knew how to dance to the artworld’s tune. She wound up with a prison sentence from 2019 to 2022, then was released on a $10,000 bail under house arrest in her Manhattan apartment with an electronic monitor. She has even earned the sobriquet ‘the notorious ankle bracelet fashionista’; perhaps this does the art she produced from prison a disservice.

Will Sorokin, freshly armed with a dispensation from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to travel to Los Angeles for the filming, be more successful on Dancing with the Stars? Rakewell can’t help but think that she may be at a disadvantage with that security accessory. Even if she does ‘bejewel’ it, as she has said, the tag will add quite a weight to her delicate ankle and will surely compromise her développé. And then there is the problem of likeability. Many people condemn the show as nothing more than a popularity contest, so it will be interesting to see how someone who declared on Instagram that ‘Gaslighting can be a great way to get ahead’ fares with the public. (Though this was part of a promotion for another reality TV show, so perhaps this attitude is ‘baked into’ her ‘brand’). And as Sorokin so rightly said: ‘What’s the worst that can happen? They can’t arrest me for dancing badly.’