The hands dance before me. There is grace to the movements-rehearsed and repeated until the vocabulary is fluid, quick, precise. and efficient. The gestures do not extend a centimeter more than necessary-neither above nor below, neither left nor right.

The performance is only movement. There are no spoken lines.

I am enthralled, engaged in the unexpected show before me.

Does this man, with a gentle stoop and gray hair, working in a Lower East Side deli, know that he has elevated the making of a sandwich, and wrapping it in wax paper, to an art form?