Ballet 'In Flagrante' [the Modern Ballet Virgin] Poem by Tony Jolley

They say you'll love it or hate it and there isn't much room in-between.
I was sure I was going to squeeze into that slightly grudging middle ground:
Appreciative of training, skill, strength, grace, movement and artistic interpretation,
But left slightly untouched because I've two left feet and little affinity with the dancefloor
And even less for tutus and tights.

I was wrong.
How I was wrong.
Not a tutu in sight last night;
But a sublime release of energy in nano-degrees of expression
A perfect continuum between the still and the explosion:
Beauty at rest and Beauty in motion;
The epitome of supple gracefulness when need be
Shape-shifted at will into a contrasting angularity.
An overwhelming sense of shared spirituality, complicity,
Never so uncouth as to be launching and catching,
But all Mantra, Kata, 'Pushing Hands' and Tai C'hi'ing:
Bodies at worship of one another, weaving and writhing,
Slow arcing, Space-Time warping and bending,
Rendering Gravity's unavoidability a mere inconsequentiality
Overcome, at will by liberating choreography.

I can't begin to explain or even to understand: it didn't work at that level with me -
I simply didn't have to disassemble or analyse anything to appreciate its staggering beauty:
It embodied the human form and all its potentials and possibilities;
Entwined in the arms of its lovers: lighting, staging and musicality
Making a love so tender, yet with such intense expression
I felt and shared their in flagrante delicto passion.