When watching a dance performance, despite the tickets being most expensive for the front rows, I choose to be in the back. Many times, I have evaluated this preference in some depth. If I am close, I can see the faces and their minute expressions, I can easily focus all of my attention onto a specific dancer. The judgement of each hand gesture is easier to pass and of all other now easily-observed nuances. The opportunity to watch the performance with a magnifying glass that is the logical mind is great. Sitting in the back, however, while this dissection is still present, lends itself to an open viewing: a larger and more whole way of absorbing the entire scene laid out on the stage. I can encompass the entirety of the feeling, of all the dresses, of all the bodies, of all the energy as a collective experience. I can feel the beauty and grandeur of the one big thing which, if I allow it, can envelop and swallow me. I can lose myself into the dance. This other extreme of experience cannot be had with the cutting of the performance into its individual pieces.
This is as true as watching a visual performance, as it is looking at a piece of art, at a person, or a flower. The ability to perceive the entirety of the object without judgement, without label; the ability to be overtaken by the object's beauty as one unit; the ability to surrender to the object's being and essence creates further beauty and further unity and a deep experience where the end result is boundless expansion, freedom, and awe.
