Theater

If I ever have to get bad news, I hope it’s from someone like Nora Brennan. She’s the children’s casting director for “Billy Elliott,” and about as big hearted and warm and attentive as possible. Faced with a phalanx of more than 140 girls at the open auditions for the show last month, she was welcoming, encouraging and supportive.

No one really knows when dance entered human experience. There are paintings dating back more than 9,000 years that show figures in what we think of as dance. There isn’t a culture on the planet that doesn’t engage in some form of dance. Whether learned as part of ritual or as part of a discipline such as ballet or contemporary dance, the desire to move rhythmically and expressively is inherently human, and we idolize the grace and beauty of the human form in motion.