Plié

I am not ashamed to admit that tonight I went to the ballet with my wife. Nor am I ashamed to confess that I actually rather liked it. Tomorrow is her birthday, and that's what she wanted to do. So we went to BYU and watched the ballet dance company there perform several different genres of ballet. Some I liked, some not so much. In the countdown, the third place was a tie between a Spanish dance, a marionette dance (there movements really looked like puppets), and a Hungarian dance at the end. Second best was a more modern style dance to some really, really neat music by Jon Schmidt - go to YouTube and type in "Jon Schmidt Taylor Swift" and listen to his really cool melding of "Love Song" with something by Creed...way cool.

The best dance of the night, by far was to Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies" from Nutcracker. It was by far the most beautiful and melodic, and the most traditional performance of the night. But what really made it for me was the lead dancer in the piece. There was something inside her that leapt out and filled me with joy as I watched her effortlessly glide and twirl and frolic and leap across the stage. I don't know the ballet terms, nor do I truly care to, but I felt something when I watched her dance. Maybe it was her seemingly effortless grace, or perhaps it was her precision and balance. Her smile, which shined through her eyes and her whole face, could definitely have something to do with it, because even though we were about as far from the dance floor as you could get, I could both see and feel pure joy in her countenance. And it made me want more. Many of the dancers were good tonight, seeming to be technically sound (but what would I know?) and to have a full grasp of the choreography. But this one little blonde dancer with the beaming countenance and effortless performance touched my heart and really created something beautiful.

May the art of my pen someday draw out similar emotions in my readers - that their hearts might be touched, that their souls might be reached, and that they may be left wanting more.