I am just 14 months into learning Tango and still trying to be acceptable as a social dancer by the end of this year. As I continue on this journey I am beginning to feel the sense of expectancy that dancers often discuss – that one day, in some as yet unknown place, I will have the perfect dance with someone.

My attention is more on this possibility, it seems to define a new part of this experience – a phase that now looks outwards as well as inwards.

It occurs to me that in a sense the journey that I am on, my slow progress, is gradually defining that perfect follower for me. By becoming clearer in my own dance I am also describing the woman that will be that perfect partner for me, in that undefined moment in the future.

At the moment everything is imprecise and lacking in definition, and so the follower is also one of so many possibilities.

But as I slowly improve so she begins to be clearer to me. My half of our embrace is defining hers, as in the future we must fit together in a precise but as yet unknown way. My musicality must compliment hers, and her energies should flow with my own.

But of course the reverse is also completely true – that follower, somewhere in the world, is on her own journey – and therefore she is in fact defining me.

I find this so exciting, that a woman somewhere is unknowingly defining a path for herself that will ultimately intersect my own, that decisions and experiences in her dancing and emotional life are gradually choosing me from all of her own multitude of possibilities.