I went to a ballet performance last night and it got me thinking about so many things. Sitting in the orchestra section, off to the right of the stage, in the dark, I watched as the music started to play and the red curtains went up. The theater was warm and the room was filled with people in fancy attire. I wondered about the building and how long ago it had been built, as it was resplendent with chandeliers, engraved ceilings, guilded molding, and intricate sculptured railings. The dancers moved gracefully, swiftly, across the stage, each move of their body orchestrated with purpose, nothing out of line, precise.

I began to think about how life is a dance and yet we don’t realize that we are in it at the time. Not till afterwards. And our lives go in and out of focus, like the way the dancers enter and exit the stage. And they all move so quickly that sometimes you miss all the fancy footwork. It’s all a blur, but you still get the gist of what’s going on.

There were four different performances, and even though they were all “ballet” they all were so different in their styles and in the way they danced. One was more classical, some more modern. One dance was just two people, a man and woman, and their relationship as they danced in a studio. The first dance was very classical, with ballerinas in tutus that looked like flowers.

The male dancers were all so amazing. They leaped and jumped in the air, as if they weighed nothing, but you know that’s not the case because they have huge leg muscles almost bursting through their tights. And they have such strength in their arms as they carry the ballerinas from one part of the stage to the other, then setting them down, twirling them around. There is such trust between a dancer and her partner.

At the end of the dances, the women who got flowers would often give their male dance partner a flower. I thought that was very nice, considering they do a lot of the heavy lifting and are great dancers themselves. But for some reason people don’t give men flowers, and I don’t think that’s fair. You can still be a man and like flowers.

At one point in the last performance I got chills during part of the dance. I forget if it was when all the female dancers had lined up and were doing this wave-like thing, or if it was another part, when the men were out dancing with their female counterparts. At any rate, by the end of the night I was thoroughly relaxed and happy that I had gotten away for a night in the city.