I

When he dances of meeting Beatrice that first time, he is a youth,his body has no real language, and his heart understands nothing of what has started. Love like a summer rain after drought, like the thin cry of a read-tailed hawk, like an angel sinking its teeth into our throat. He has only beginner steps to tell of the sheen inside him.The boy Dante sees her first with the absolute love possible only when we are ignorant of each other,Arm across his face,he runs off. Years go by.

II

The next dance is about their meeting again. He does an enchainement around her. Beatrice's heavy hair is dark and long. She watches with the occhi dolci. His jumps are a man's jumps. His steps have become the moves of a dancer who understand the dance. A man who recognizes the body's greed.She is deep in her body's heart. He is splendid.She is lost and is lead away by the aunt.Her family is careful after that. She goes by in a carriage. He raises on his toes, port de bras, his eyes desperate. Then she is at an upstairs window of the palace. He dances his sadness brilliantly in the moonlight below on the empty piazza,concentrating. She moves the curtain a little to the side, and he is happy. It's a dream we all know, the perfection of love that is not real. There is a founatin behind him.

III It is a few years later and they are finally in his simple room. His long dance of afterward is a declaration of joy and of gratitude and devotion. She dances strangely, putting on her clothes. A delicate goodbye. Her soul is now free from that kind of love. He stands motionless, bewildered, watching her go, Then dances his grief wonderfully.

IV We see Dante as an old man. He is a dancer who can manage only the simple steps of the beginning. He dances the romance lost, the love that never was,and the great love missed because of dreaming. First position, entrechat, and the smallest jumps. The passionate quiet. The quieter and the strongest. The special sorrow of a happy, imperfect heart that finally knows well how to dance. But does not.