I just don’t get the idea of guilty pleasure (unless you’re talking about something that’s actually illegal, that is). The expression is usually employed by people who are holding up their nose at the things they enjoy. I find that just plain odd: Pleasure is pleasure, quality is quality, no matter where you find them. There’s no high or low art, just good and bad art. The guilty-pleasure notion has less to do with aesthetics than with a class system that dares not speak its name.

What brings this on, you may ask? The New York Times’ dance critic, Alastair Macaulay, just surveyed the Tony nominees for best choreography, as well as a couple of other shows. It’s a fun read, and I highly recommend it. Especially since he mentions finding choreographic delights in unexpected places. It’s the way he introduces his discoveries that somewhat baffles me. A sentence in the first paragraph begins with “It is not without embarrassment that I report my recent delight …”; the next with “And I am somewhat shamefaced in mentioning my pleasure in …” These happy moments were in Cirque du Soleil’s “Banana Shpeel” and “La Cage aux Folles,” respectively.

How can one be embarrassed or shamefaced to enjoy a number? If it’s good, it’s good, and it doesn’t matter if you caught a glimpse of beauty or creativity at ABT, in a Lady Gaga video or in “Dancing with the Stars.” What matters is that you caught it. Somewhere, somehow, people transcended their potentially cheesy surroundings and came up with something great, or at least interesting. This is cause for joy, indeed — unqualified joy.