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There are few moments in one’s life that completely captivate and dazzle the soul with unbridled beauty or that reveal the magnificence of life that is so often left unnoticed.
Yet when I attended The Sleeping Beauty ballet at Cincinnati’s Music Hall, I felt an unspeakable joy that permeated my mind and soul at having witnessed such an awe-inspiring and resplendent masterpiece.
It was an absolutely exquisite performance, where the dulcet music of Tchaikovsky sprang to life in the motions of the dancers like a renaissance of beauty, shimmering in their elegant leaps and pirouettes.
The scenery resounded with this very beauty. A wash of impressionistic color in deep greens and blues gave the stage a vibrant quietude, from which the ecstatic brilliance and agility of the lithe dancers drew their dynamic power. It was an infinitely beautiful fairytale expressed in the silent language of dance that transported me to a realm of beauty I could never have imagined.
My favorite part of the ballet, the Rose Adagio, was the pinnacle of technique and beauty combined. As the gentle glissandos of harps began to introduce the scene, the Princess Aurora performed a long series of arduous, technically difficult positions.
Yet the most beautiful part of the sequence was the grace with which she moved. The ballerina perfectly exemplified youth and royal elegance in one countenance that shone with the delight of dancing, a sense of clandestine yet tremendous profundity indicative of art.
The way the ballerina fluttered across the stage, the precision of her motions and the sangfroid she exuded evoked a sense of wonder, in my mind and heart, at the brilliance and beauty of art.
Moments in which we encounter great works of art make us stop and gaze in pure, unadulterated astonishment at a generative force of beauty that seems utterly beyond the reach of our minds or that lies so far beyond our realm of comprehension that we can only admit our defeat at this altar of art.
The beauty of art, like that of the ballet that I was able witness, is a force of transfiguration. Art has the power to compel and disturb us, to awaken us to the omnipresent sources of beauty strewn around like notes of sunlight dappling the lush verdure of a summer path.
The power of art is sublime. It speaks of the furthest depths and loftiest heights of the soul’s intimate feeling and transports one into a stratum of consciousness beyond the quotidian occurrences she perceives.
Art imagines an infinite wellspring of possibility that emerges from one’s initial encounter, from which she leaves, breathless, with a greater understanding of herself and of the world around her.
To immerse oneself in art is to awaken oneself to a sonorous and kaleidoscopic world, the true world, enriched by the beauty and profundity of the infinitesimal.
My experience with the ballet was an encounter with dazzling music, swaths of rose hues, limpid greens and mellifluous dancing that left me suspended in a state of illimitable wonder and joy.
When I behold moments that are so filled with aesthetic prowess and infinite meaning or that give way to an encounter with something that seems eternally beautiful, I cannot help but feel deep within myself the consonance that pervades all of life: that art illuminates our true selves, our deepest natures, our most precious enigmas.
It is through the lens of art that we see the veracity of our being and of the world around us, and we awaken to find the freedom and resplendence life brings.
Sofia Ordoñez is the Arts & Entertainment Editor for the Newswire. She is a junior English major from Cincinnati.