Fifteen dancers, moving with complete fluidity. I was captivated. The height of the ceiling made me feel as though I could achieve great things – I thought of the Renaissance masters in churches, capturing heaven.

The idea was that the audience followed the dancers around the gallery. The proximity of them was intense, so much so that at one point during the performance I actually had a desire to reach out and touch one of them. Jenny held my hand and whispered to me that it was wonderful to witness such powerful movement within the confines of the walls because she was used to visiting it as a gallery and experiencing its quietness and studying the pictures hanging in their innate stillness. She was struck by the comparison. All in a whisper. I squeezed her hand and I felt a pleasure travel down into my body from my stomach and into my legs.

There was an atmosphere in the room and it was erotic. What the dancers were engaged in, their bodily distortions done in complicated and extended strokes of physicality, seemed to evoke something in Jenny and her eyes met mine. I felt very much connected with her in that moment and I felt that our unity was becoming obvious to her and she appreciated the power of that unity. I could tell by the way she placed her hand on my back as one of the dancers moved so close to us I had to take a step backwards.

I had set up boundaries, boundaries that were deeply personal to me and they were lines that I’d drawn around myself. It wasn’t intentional. It was as if somebody else had set those walls around me and all the time I wished for Jenny to break through them.

We went for a meal after the show. We talked about what we had witnessed with an abundance of freedom. I felt uninhibited and Jenny seemed to be completely relaxed after strangers’ bodies being so close to ours. We could see the glitter on the girls’ faces, the pores on the guys’ faces. I had never been entirely comfortable with anyone in my personal space. Perhaps it was an over-reaction to my mother, who was extremely protective of me as a child. I remember the way she held on tight to my hand if there was a road in sight and my need to loosen her grip on me the older I became because it was a gesture that I began to find humiliating. And maturing was like that, a steady process of small realizations, tiny facts.

The restaurant had a feeling of elegance that came from its deliberate attempt to mix the old and the new furniture-wise, which was becoming a fashionable experience in Dublin dining. Jenny said she felt right at home.