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Prepare To Have Your Fear Of Heights Triggered ... Soothingly

Last Friday, six members of the "vertical dance troupe" BANDALOOP marked the grand opening of a new 17-story building in Boston's Seaport District by suspending themselves from wires and dancing against its side.

Actually "dancing" doesn't quite cover it.

The performance is beautiful: they weave, undulate and soar with a muscular grace.

The performance is also, if you're one of the millions who harbor even the thinnest sliver of a perfectly logical and utterly defensible fear of heights in your soul, absolutely terrifying.

Watching it, we experience a weirdly specific mixture of awe and fear — both at once, bound inextricably up with one another.

The CBS affiliate in Boston posted this video to its Facebook page last Friday, and over 3 million people have watched it there. But there's a good chance, given the horrific events of last weekend, that you missed it. There's an even better chance, given those events, that you need it.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Glen Weldon is a host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. He reviews books, movies, comics and more for the NPR Arts Desk.