There is a picture on the internet of Joaquin Cortes which people of a nervous disposition should perhaps avoid looking for. In it, he appears to be leaping into the blackness, as naked as the day he was born.
His muscles look fit to burst out of his calves, his thighs and his chest; his eyes are closed and his head is thrown back in ecstasy.
It is the kind of look that you should really only see if you know the other person very well indeed. Intimately, if you will.
All that protects Señor Cortes's modesty is the well-toned leg of a woman. He is caressing it as she clings to his back, and claws at his chest. To look at it is to blush instantly.
Travelling to the dancer's hometown of Madrid to meet him, I expect to do just that.
When he burst on to the scene in the mid-Nineties, promising to reignite the touristy art of flamenco with lust, passion and soul, he caused a storm.
Elle Macpherson described him as “pure sex'', Emma Thompson sank to her knees on stage next to him, and Madonna and J Lo proclaimed themselves huge fans. Trudie Styler paid £6,800 for a pair of his dancing boots.
Infusing flamenco with modern dance and ballet, he has taken several large tours around the globe, selling out places such as the Royal Albert Hall, mostly to swooning women.
On stage he exudes a swarthy sort of arrogance; when he dances — stomp stomp stomp, tap tap tap, stamp stamp stamp — the message is very much: I will make lurrrve to you, but do not expect me to hang around much longer afterwards.
Grief and the man
But when he appears in view, in the bar of a boutique hotel, he seems more little boy lost than Latin love god.
That is a surprise, this shyness, this nervousness — not at all what one would expect from a man who has made a career out of dancing bare-chested in front of millions across the globe. For a man I have seen naked on the internet.
Soon, the reason for his quietness becomes clear. Just three weeks before we meet, his mother died after a long illness.
Today is his first day out of the house after a period of mourning required by his Roma Gypsy roots.
Despite his grief, he insists on giving me a guided tour of the city in which he grew up, starting at a flamenco bar he has frequented since his youth, which is covered in pictures of him strutting his stuff.
In Spain, Cortes's fame is of David Beckham-like proportions — there is even a square named after him. Just walking down the street with him makes you feel special by proxy.
People gawk, point, stare and ask for photos. An old man tells him he dances like a bird.
Women fan themselves upon catching sight of him, despite the fact it is freezing cold. It takes a very long time to get anywhere.
He tells me he likes the attention, the fans, but recently people have begun to speculate about whether or not we may have seen Cortes dance his last dance. Once he announced that he would retire at the age of 33.
He will be 40 soon. Physically and emotionally, times have been difficult.
“The most important thing to the gypsy culture is family,'' he says. “My mother supported me from the beginning.
"When I did my first performance I said: ‘Mother, you must not cry and embarrass me!' She is my inspiration. So I must dance again for my mother. That is what I will do.''
Cortes is warming up now; there is a twinkle of flamenco in his eyes as we walk past Madrid's royal palace, the Prado Museum and the Puerta del Sol, which through a series of charade-like gestures he manages to explain is the very centre of the city.
Cortes decided when he was just 7 that he wanted to dance. When he was 12, he was signed up to perform on a children's television show and three years later, he joined the National Ballet Company of Spain. At 23 he left to set up his own dance company.
Sweet, above all
As we near the end of the day, he takes me to a café where the waitress embraces him in a hug and he asks her to make him a coffee with soul.
He says he feels for the staff here, because they must have much bigger dreams — and we must be so thankful for what we have.
Then he starts asking me about where I work and if I am happy. I think that rather than being the sexiest man I have ever interviewed — as I had expected him to be — he is actually the sweetest.
And then a funny thing happens. As the waitress presents us with the coffees she promises she has made with soul, he places his hand on my chest, right over my heart, which I am sure beats a little faster.
“The waitress, she have so little, and you have so much,'' he smiles, and I think he is about to deliver another sermon about counting one's blessings.
But it turns out the top button on my dress has undone, revealing a bit too much of me. “You must do yourself up please. I am finding it hard to concentrate.'' He laughs uproariously.
And finally, I blush. There is surely life in Joaquin Cortes yet.