I wanted to incorporate a dancer in the subject matter. Dance is physical poetry. I wanted to depict movement. I wanted the male subject to be engaged in a kind of unfamiliar choreographed static move or step - almost as if engaged in a surreal courting ritual of the animal world - oblivious to our gaze and facing away from us-internalizing. The girl is the one who looks directly/provocatively out of the painting/window (within a painting) at the viewer engages the viewer where the dancer is disengaged. They might be connected. I looked at Vermeer’s Girl with a pearl earring with it's feeling of mystery for reference. The pink shoes that appear in 'Step by Step' are 'Butterfly Mules' that Terry and Liz de Havilland made specially for my wife Emma. The models are Vidal Sancho and Esme Bianco who appear elsewhere in the series as they had the look I was after.