Those who may see me twitching and moving more spastically than usual as they draw near need not fear. Chances are I have not lost all control of my body, let alone my senses – I’ve just taken a temporary leave of absence.

What’s the explanation? Who is to blame for this situation?

Dancers. They’ve done it to me again. Dancers have got my toes tapping and my fingers snapping.

Saturday found me among those attending “Sometimes a Great Motion,” a dance concert at the River Theater in Astoria. The production, featuring an adroit and appealing variety of styles, continues its run tonight.

Somehow I managed to refrain from dancing in the aisles. That might have been a bit distracting. But I was wiggling in my seat – a compulsion I have experienced previously when watching dance concerts.

People close to me personally are involved in the production. I was reminded how familiarity with those on stage can add a dimension of marvel to witnessing the magic.

But regardless of whether one knows those daring to tip their toes into the tides of dance, the performers deserve a wave of welcome – and in the region surrounding the mouth of the Columbia, the wave should be mighty. The dance scene is hopping. Repeatedly as I have attended various dance performances, audiences at the end of the shows do not shuffle away from an evening in shambles – they leap from their seats and shake a leg to congratulate the dancers and the choreographers for jobs well done.

In this sense, “Sometimes a Great Motion” is, deservedly, no exception. And the talent evident in the production is, in a word, exceptional. Through movement and expression we encounter whimsy, angst, moodiness, parody, frolic, frustration, exaltation and yearnings ponderous and snappy and downright primitive. In the course of such displays we may glimpse ourselves in each of our daily tumblings through the dance of life.

I suppose I speak so highly of hoofers because I am moved by movement – especially controlled movement. How do they do that? I often find myself awestruck on the heels of a dance number, as thoughts tap and skip with childhood abandon. The feelings whisper of times as a boy when I buoyantly bopped to a beat or twirled like a top just for the dizzying thrill. (OK, I still do that once in a while, when no one else is looking).

Part of the thrill also comes from the good fortune of witnessing young dancers learning the foundations of ballet, modern, tap and jazz. I did so as a reporter where years ago my beats included the nation’s oldest performing arts camp west of the Mississippi, a place with alumni including Dustin Hoffman. There, students rehearsed in studios with walls that could open to a mountain forest. They looked as if they could bend their knees and literally leap into the trees.

Inspired by witnessing such things, over the years I have tried to improve on my own abilities to move with what might pass for coordination. On occasion, I have managed to drag myself onto a dance floor – when the lights are low and people are each doing their own sort of jig. Sometimes I take a sort of pride in the fact that I am chronically out of step, and try to embrace the resemblance of my movements to those of a confused frog.

Furthermore, I have taken ballroom and swing les-sons a time or two, and I have learned I can even remember basic steps – for about 20 seconds.

On theatrical stages I have enjoyed opportunities to attempt to affect the yawp and stretch of a vagabond on the street to the music of Phillip Glass. I have found myself unwittingly doing a tango with a band of mischief-making forest faeries in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” I have wound my way into characters wild and wiggly.

After a time, I began to take solace in the notion that sometimes (certainly not the times of stepping on partners’ feet) – sometimes the way I move is not bad, it is just sort of … Brad. That is to say, we all have subtle (and some not so subtle) differences in the ways we walk, twist, jounce and jitter. And that is part of the joy – we are each our own critter.

So I can convince myself that even when dancing I, too, sometimes know what to do … if I take it step by step. And I can get in the groove when watching other people move. When the chance comes to watch a dance, I’ll not only be happy to give it a whirl, I’ll be there in a hop, skip and a jump.

Brad Bolchunos acknowledges that when watching something suspenseful and finding himself on the edge of his seat, wiggling can be dangerous. So he tries to keep his feet on the ground and refrain from levitating. (“OK,” he adds, “I still do that once in a while, when no one else is looking.”)