Just a Few Words About Ballet in General

What is it that makes ballet special? I think it's because ballet is a bit of an oxymoron, trying to impose a rational framework, a very French Cartesian 16th Century mechanistic framework, with opera house stages primarily in mind, upon an essentially irrational activity like dancing. And the framework is both sweeping, and arbitrary. For example, why the emphasis on turnout? One book I read pointed out that turned-out leg is more effective for stage work in general - people can see a turned-out leg more readily than a turned-in leg - and that's certainly a consideration, but there are plenty of other dancing traditions without turnout. And some folk dance elements are brought into ballet (pas de basque, tarantella) but others are more-or-less excluded (e.g. Celtic or Balkan dancing), which maybe has something to do with proximity to the European heartland, but maybe is just somebody's mad insistence. And yet. And yet..... It works! Ballet dancers, with their discipline, really push the limits on what the human body can do, and thus enrich dancing in general, even dancing done in spite of ballet. It's really a conundrum of an art. Wish I could master it!