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I am officially the world’s worst dancer. Two left feet, a chronic lack of coordination and about as much natural rhythm as an embarrassing uncle at a wedding reception; I’m not so much Strictly Come Dancing as sit right down. But, inspired by the forthcoming Eurovision Dance Contest which features dancing couples from sixteen countries across Europe, I’ve come to Finland to try to find my musical mojo.

Finland? The country is better known for Lordi, the death-metal monsters from Lapland who have previously won the Eurovision Song Contest with their song Hard Rock Hallelujah. Every July however, over 100,000 people from as far afield as Japan and Argentina gather in a small town in western Finland to celebrate a secret fetish: tango. The Tangomarkkinat Festival in Seinäjoki has grown from humble beginnings in 1984 to become the cornerstone event of the short but sacred days of the Scandinavian summer. In the warming weeks leading up to it, traditional wooden dancehalls become packed with Fins practicing their footwork and reviving the manners of a more genteel age.

Tango was born around the turn of the century in the suburbs of Buenos Aires and visiting Argentine musicians brought its dramatic vignettes of Latin life to Europe in the aftermath of the First World War. By the time tango fever had gripped Paris in the 1930’s Argentine tango had developed into a syncopated form of music incorporating influences from early jazz and blues. In Finland, where dancing in restaurants was banned during the Second World War, it was only after 1948, when restrictions were relaxed, that the local tango scene could flourish.

The Fins took the music to their hearts, but also brought a dour sense of Nordic gloom to it by tempering the Argentine ardour with a dash of minor-key Finnish melancholy and adopting some of the rhythmic characteristics of traditional Finnish folk dances. After enjoying a renaissance with the younger generation during the Nineties, contemporary Finnish tango ballads speak of lost love, dark winter nights alone and your girlfriend running off with your best mate.

“Melancholy is beautiful to the Finnish soul. The sadder the tango, the more Finnish people love it,” says Maarit Niiniluoto, a tango historian and presenter of the popular Iskelmäradio tango radio programme. “Tango is poetic and deeply symbolic. The paradox of longing for someone while dancing very close appeals strongly to Fins.”

On a rainy afternoon in a Seinäjoki school hall, Ake Blomqvist and his perma-tanned partner, Leena, are gliding around the dance floor with the insouciant aplomb of Kimi Raikkonen taking a hairpin bend at 200km/h. Ake, his powder-blue suit immaculate and his silver quiff jauntily teased to attention, may be Finland’s leading tango teacher but even the octogenarian silver fox can only look on witheringly at my evident lack of tango prowess.

“Count the steps, feel the music,” he urges me, leading a small private class in preparation for the festival’s mass street party. “You’re taking giant steps,” he chastises me, “Think, slow, slow, quick quick slow.”

I close my eyes and try to loose myself in the rhythm but it’s no good. I leave the feet of my unfortunate dance partner blackened and bruised, while an attempt to pull off a dramatic turn results in me causing an ugly tango pile up. Out of my depth, I slip away quietly, jump on the bright-orange tango bus and nip across town to the Atria Halle, a converted ice hockey stadium where the Finnish Tango Championships are entering the critical final stages. Here, the 2005 Finnish champions Frans and Johanna Kärki are waiting for me with a few judicious words of advice.

“Passion is the key to dancing Finnish tango. Even if you’re a good technical dancer, without passion it has no meaning,” says Franz, putting a brotherly arm my shoulders.

“I’ll let you into a secret,” he adds, as a blur of sequins, fishnets and hair gel engulfs the dance floor beside us. “Fins are not very talkative, so dancing gives Finnish men a way to connect with women. According to Finnish dance etiquette, the women has to dance two songs when a men asks. If he can impress her with his inner passion during those two songs, it’s worth more than a thousand words.”

Out on the streets of Seinäjoki, the party is already well and truly under way. Strolling down the town’s main drag, Kirkkokatu, there’s an air tango competition for tango devotees yet to find a dance partner and the tango jogging group is just completing its second lap. In a billboard-plastered trailer, a man with goose bump skin and a rapidly receding hairline is taking a break from the dancing by trying out the latest word in mobile sauna equipment, clad only in the skimpiest of skimpy blue towels.

On stage, meanwhile, Finnish torch singers in hip-hugging trousers are belting out elegiac tango classics, such Maja’s Lumihiutaleita (Snowflakes) and Mononen’s Satumaa (Wonderland). The whole of Seinäjoki, except me it seems, is lost in music; middle-aged Fins with limbs entwined and eyes closed are all consumed by the reverie of the moment.

Over at the Seinäjoki University Business School, Argentina-born Julio Vallejo Medina has gathered a panel of tango experts for the International Tango Seminar. Medina, a member of the Buenos Aires Tango Academy, runs Intertango, a project backed with 100,000 euros of EU money to foster young tango talent in Finland, France and Spain.

“I’m not a very good dancer myself,” Julio reassures me as I bemoan my inability to throw a few shapes on the dance floor. “Personally, I prefer to dance Finnish rather than Argentine tango. It’s less macho, more sensitive. In Finland, you dance to show your closeness to each other.”

Back at dance class the next day, with words of advice echoing around my head against a soundtrack of tango rhythms, I feel a new resolve to conquer my dance floor nerves. Ake praises my determination but clearly there are still hours of sweat and practice ahead.

Still, after a weekend soaking up the inner passion of Finnish tango, I have come to realising one thing - I can find my musical mojo with practice, dancing close with my wife in our lounge with Strictly Come Dancing this autumn. I may not be a Finnish tango champion but still there’s music in my soul. And, after all, it takes two to tango.

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