And as a leader I can take anybody, ask them to close their eyes and follow; and even if they’ve never danced tango, they can do it.”The lesson is plain – if you want to whirl around the world, then take some time to learn that esperanto of the body – the basic hopping, skipping and spinning that is dance – before you go.And the alternative? Retired Royal Navy commander Ronnie Herbert Smith recalls a dance-related embarrassment in the 1960s. “I’ve been to Tunisia and had a queue of people who had never danced tango, but they wanted to dance. Federico Mazandarani, who teaches six tango classes a week across London, believes this. Dancers the globe over need dancing partners, and so if you can dance, they’ll find you. In Cuba you have to dance, and there’s no way you won’t want to.Finding dance hotspots world-wide – Morocco, Iran, Australia, India – is easy.

And in Cuba everybody dances – not to dance in a Havana nightspot would mark you out as much as would stripping to your underwear and break-dancing centre-floor in some English disco. The Cuban bands whose CDs are the big world music craze across Europe are very likely to be providing sparkling beats and joyful melodies in some local dance club back home. Ireland, especially in Clare, Kerry and Galway, has nightly accordion- driven ceilidhs with, invariably, friendly locals to initiate and teach incomers.But for a one-stop total dance destination, my nomination is Cuba. For tango, short of heading for the cantinas of Buenos Aires, both Amsterdam and Helsinki have vibrant, if idiosyncratic, clubs. Hungary has numerous dance houses with live music – csrds being the main leg-shaking exercise – though some can be rather earnest and purist. Dancing in Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia is close to mandatory, enforced by high-quality alcohol and defy-you-not-to-hit- the-floor rhythms.

Africa is full of bars and small clubs with some of the danciest music around. “Dancing is a way to meet people; you don’t have to speak a word of their language – you communicate with your bodies.” Next she wants to learn flamenco, because, “if you know a lot of dances, then you have more places you can go in the world and dance with people”.And just where are the most rewarding dance destinations? Well, pretty much anywhere. Pimpa Mingkwan dances ballet, jazz, ballroom, salsa and tango. The best horsemen were the best dancers, partnering the girls from the ranches and villages with the calm precision of dressage riders, mixed with the hold-on-and-holler plunges of bronco-busters.Dancing is all about wordless communication – a light pull on a shoulder, a step forward and a shift of weight, a shared understanding of the music and how it moves bodies.