A lot of people who are already...

A lot of people who are already a bit blase about space travel still feel their hearts lift at a ballet performance.

There’s something about these space conquerors of the dance world: leaping, turning, carving patterns in the air that blaze on the retina for a minute, as when you look at a bright light and look away again. And then, in a blink, an arm extends (first the arm, then the hand, floating out at the end of the extension with the amazing grace of a benediction), or a body droops like a willow tree in a storm, and another pattern emerges.

The field of dance is astounding, but accessible. After all, we have all danced; it’s part of our genes to respond physically to music.

But the art of choreography remains a foreign language. How does a choreographer, this sculptor in air and living tissue, merge all the individual images into an overall pattern? Perhaps the process resembles a painter’s. Standing back from the canvas until the ineluctable certainty arises: It needs a spot of red. Right there.

As choreographers contemplate a stage, maybe a spot of space pulls their attention like a powerful vacuum. A sudden rush of bodies should go here--that’s what the music demands.

Choreographers probably test off the chart in spatial relations. They must all parallel park perfectly the first time. All we can do is relax and enjoy the mystery, and feel our own pudgy clumsiness melt away as the dancers’ perfect bodies bear us into space.

The Miami City Ballet, led by artistic director Edward Villella, will perform at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Friday and Saturday.

The opening night program will feature three works by George Balanchine, followed on Saturday by the West Coast premiere of “Danzalta,” a 45-minute ballet commissioned by UCLA and incorporating Peruvian and Ecuadorean folk themes in a neoclassical framework.

Both programs start at 8 p.m. Tickets are available at the UCLA Central Ticket Office and all Ticketmaster outlets. Prices vary. Call (310) 825-9261.