An Ode to Ballet

There’s a silence before the curtain rises that feels almost sacred, like the air itself knows what’s about to happen. On Saturday evening, I went to see Swan Lake at the Auditorio Nacional. The orchestra, conducted by Gavriel Heine, began to play and the entire space changed temperature. You could feel the violins in your skin, the cellos in your chest. It was a sound that didn’t just fill the theatre: it filled you.

It was my sister’s first time seeing a ballet live. She cried halfway through, and I understood why. That’s what perfection does to you, it moves emotion the way very few things still can. There’s something about ballet that reaches the parts of you modern life rarely touches. Watching it, you realise that art used to be about devotion, about striving for beauty so pure it almost hurts. It made me long for the eras when art was sacred, when attending the ballet was an evening of reverence, and when elegance was an everyday language.

The audience seemed to know this too. People had dressed with quiet grace: tailored coats, silk scarves, soft dresses, polished shoes. There was a collective respect in the air, a recognition that what we were about to witness was something to be felt, not consumed. It reminded me of a world that once existed: Paris in the 19th century, perhaps where art wasn’t entertainment but ritual. I wanted to be transported there, into a Degas painting, all tulle and candlelight and the scent of rosin on wooden floors.

On stage, Odette appeared, luminous and fragile. Ballet is devotion disguised as elegance. The ballerinas seemed to breathe the music itself, each movement balancing control and surrender, exhaustion and grace. It’s the most delicate rebellion against imperfection. The orchestra wasn’t accompaniment; it was pulse, mirroring every heartbreak in Tchaikovsky’s score.

When it ended, I couldn’t move. I sat in silence, as if clapping would break the spell. Swan Lake reminded me that beauty doesn’t need to shout: it simply exists, demanding reverence. That grace isn’t a gift; it’s work refined into lightness.

Maybe that’s why it lingers for days after.

Because in a world that moves too fast, ballet still asks us to pause, to look, to feel. To remember that art, when it’s perfect, doesn’t just entertain, it transforms.