By Letty Bassart

Ineffable:  inexpressible, unutterable, beyond words, overwhelming, deep, unspeakable, indefinable

Painfully shy for most of my life, my response anytime my excessive silence was questioned, was, “I dance so I don’t have to talk.”  This cliché of the quiet dancer self-perpetuated for quite some time.

It is funny the way dancers gauge their exposure and degree of nakedness.  In my second choreographic work, I danced in a nude colored girdle and believed that every movement was completely revealing, courageous, obvious, and vulnerable.  The dance was filled with half-spoken text and cradled itself within carefully selected sewing patterns that contained stitched phrases, such as “me paro descalza sobre los vestigios de un parentesis desbordado” (I stand barefoot on the shards of a ruptured parenthesis); I of course believed, my voice was completely clear.

Naturally, words do not necessarily correlate to voice.  What then are its genuine components?  Do we revere talking far more than it merits?

Commercial and charter fisherman, Brian Schick frequently makes statements like, “I wanted to be a fisherman so I bought a boat not a bumper sticker.”  Visual artist Laura Luna often reminds me that talking is overrated, by putting wheels on bookcases, continuously making work, and grappling with the challenges of actual motherhood on a daily basis.

As a believer in and advocate for the arts, I spent two full days in D.C. discussing how to prove their value.  How can their impact and importance be named and quantified?  Do they increase self-esteem, do they make better creative and critical thinkers, and do they make better computer programmers and scientists?  Everyone listened as John Bransford, a humble expert on expertise placed efficiency on the X axis and innovation on Y.  Too far on the Y, “frustrated novice….too far on the X…”

Following two days of incessant talk and research, some more provocative than others; I was fortunate enough to pause and read Balzac and the Chinese Seamstress.  Later the same day, the ever gorgeous Flower Duet, streamed out of my colleague’s ipod.   Neither of these, included conversation, yet their powerful effects were unmistakable.

At last week’s ballet, one simple three-year-old sentence encapsulated a spectacular afternoon: “Look mom, Don Quixote is dreaming.”

Words were far from scarce for me when I ranted about my disappointment in the performing art center’s name change, the hotel ballroom color of the upholstery, and the way the hand in the lobby reminds me more of Halloween than clapping.

These tirades missed the experience itself; the stage, the audience, and the sound of applause that mimics soft rain on a tin roof.  As an audience member in the Ziff Ballet & Opera House for the first time, I found myself awe stricken, moved and silenced by its very existence in my hometown.