Daniel Rondinoni and Ana Maria Gayoso are milongueros who have been dancing together since 2003. I met them at Carolina Couto’s la Rosa Milonga, where every Sunday afternoon you can find them sitting at the same corner table, waiting for music that stirs their passion, before rising to dance—always with each other. In a ronda of several hundred dancers jostling for space, Daniel and Ana appear as if they are dancing in a room by themselves, their commitment to each other so profound that they seem to have been transported into another temporal and spatial dimension. It is not only the unusual shape of their embrace (foreheads pressed together, clasped hands suspended a foot above their shoulders) that is so striking, but their ability to build a world no one else can penetrate. My challenge as a filmmaker was to translate the intimacy of their dancing, whose depth is palpable when witnessed against the backdrop of hundreds of other dancers, when filming just the two of them dancing alone. Could their world-making do the inverse, encourage us to imagine a crowded dance floor when they are dancing by themselves?

Whereas most milongueros seek pleasure in discovering themselves anew in the different embrace of each new partner, Ana finds pleasure in rediscovering a connection with Dani each time they dance. She explains, “each time he embraces me is a new embrace for me.”