mack/misophist PMed me about this discussion, but I choose to answer in open forum, least anyone misunderstand where I am coming from.

Mack, I do not regard you with scorn. I just disagree with you. I'm afraid I do not agree that the human body is inherently ungainly.

In addition to having seen a lot of ballet, both of my sisters were figure skaters and both became National Champions:   Mary Firth and her partner Donald Laws won the 1948 Silver Dance Championship, and Patricia Firth won two Pacific Coast Senior Ladies' Championships and the Junior Ladies Nationals in 1954 (if I remember correctly), and this qualified her to compete in the World Championships in Vienna, where she placed seventh behind Tenley Albright and Carol Heiss. Both studied ballet to enhance their skating programs. I've watched a lot of figure skating and a lot of ballet.

I also fenced competitively when I was younger. Fencing has changed a lot in recent years. Now, competitive fencers tend to look like a couple of berserk sewing machines going at each other, but before the institution of electrical scoring equipment (able to distinguish between touches 1/25th of a second apart), one had to mind one's form, do nothing that one would not do in a real duel (hit your opponent without being hit at all, not just before he hits you), and make sure your touches were solid and clean so the judges could see them clearly. This led to some really clean-looking form (like the pictures in the fencing manuals), and the swordplay was fast, aggressive—and graceful .

Despite the fact that the human body is a product evolution, much of which could be considered a collection of (to use a computer programmer's term) "kludges," I see a well-trained dancer or athlete as marvelously efficient (within the context of the configuration) and elegantly pleasing to the eye.

If you consider the human body inherently ugly and ungainly, well, I'd say that's a matter of esthetic opinion. I repeat, I do not regard you with scorn. But I do disagree with you on this point. And as they say, there's no accounting for taste.

Don Firth