I wasn’t exactly born talking, but I believe it came to me quickly.

I love words. I get juiced when I can tell someone what I think or feel. I used to seek out chances to participate in market research studies, not just for the fifty bucks but for the joy of having an audience for my opinion.

Yet, I was so happy about an unexpected offer to see The Joffrey Ballet this week; to treat myself to a performance where words were not involved. A friend who does reviews for a local publication was comped tickets and found that I was a very enthusiastic last minute culture companion.

I love unplanned upgrades or getting things for free anyway, but an experience of music and  movement whose beauty can linger much longer than the run time — just tell me the address and start time.

I rarely go to dance performances even though the city is home to several stellar companies and offers outstanding programs. This early spring night’s bill featured Serenade, a Tchaikovsky composition originally titled Serenade for Strings and choreographed by Balanchine in the 1930s, and a world premiere, Of Mice and Men, based on the famous Steinbeck novella.

It’s hard not to love Tchaikovsky’s music. It’ can be delicate AND full of emotion. One’s first exposure to ballet often involves Swan Lake or The Nutcracker. The music itself can transport you to the courtyard of Siegfried’s Castle or the Land of Sugar Plum Fairies.

In any traditionally staged ballet, teams of dancers leaping in the air or spinning in place on their toes is a gift, a special kind of beauty.

Ballet, any kind of dance performance, can be so inspiring. Watching talented dancers, I am led to think about what movement can look like even though I can’t replicate a dancer’s tiniest hand gesture.

I enjoyed watching the hour of Serenade. At the crossroads of romantic and modern styles, tens of young women in ethereal and flowing light blue dresses, seemed to float across the empty stage bathed in blue light, making way for interludes by the romantic leads.

But I found Of Mice and Men singularly moving.

It featured STORY. The music, the choreography, and the dancers all acted in service to the STORY.

It reminded me that any story is OUR STORY. Any story is a lived experience of what it means to be human.

Only vaguely recalled from required high school reading, in front of me, I witnessed a tale of love and friendship, dreams, jealousy, and being unconscious to one’s own power.

The largely male cast represented something fresh in dance. I took in beauty in movement that was profoundly muscular.

I was really aware of the exquisiteness of collaboration as I rarely experience it in a movie or play or even another ballet where each artist does his thing alone; where one artist crafts a script, another composes the music and a cast brings the work to life.

Although the plot had been around for over eighty years, what I saw and heard was new. The interpretation was new. The performance was so clearly the output of incredible communications and cooperation between the Thomas Newman, the composer, Cathy Marston, the choreographer, and an extraordinary company of dancers.

As I saw Marston comment in a TV interview, “We told a story in a new way, as only it could be done in this art form.”

Yes, novels have flashbacks and character descriptions and pivotal dialogs, but sitting for this performance at the Civic Opera House gave me the sense of purity of emotion.

Witnessing the beauty of a story without words is no small thing.

Photo by Robert Collins on Unsplash