A lot of my knowledge about ballet comes from Jennifer Homans' "Apollos's Angels: A History of Ballet." This from the Wall Street Journal review:
-----------------------------------------------
How to explain this art form to them? Ms. Homans, a former dancer turned academic, has focused on answering the question: "How had the art come to embody ideas, or a people, or a time?" For while the story she tells begins very specifically in France, in the 16th century, it crosses continents and plays politics. "Ballet," she writes, "was shaped by the Renaissance and French Classicism, by revolutions and Romanticism, by Expressionism and Bolshevism, modernism and the Cold War." "Apollo's Angels," then, is the intellectual history of a deeply physical form. Ms. Homans lays the stress on ideas-and, by extension, idealism.
-----------------------------------------------
As I was growing up, I believe I saw each of the Tchaikovsky ballets once. I had no interest in seeing them - or any other ballets - again. It was about 15 years ago when I asked a friend of mine (whose brother had been a principal dancer at NYCB) where to start with ballet. She invited me to a performance that included Balanchine's "Serenade" (to Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings) and "Stravinsky Violin Concerto" I was gobsmacked. This was beauty. Neither work has a traditional story (although something's going on in Serenade). What entranced me was the way the choreographer and dancers responded to the music. The dancer and the dance became one.
And as the music varied so did the choreography. "Glass Pieces" is obviously heavily influenced by modern dance. But when Robbins' turns to Chopin, his style is very different. This from his masterpiece, "Dances at a Gathering," again performed by the Paris Ballet:
This is a more subtle blending of classical movement with some hints of modern.
Over time I have grown to appreciate story ballet, but my heart is still with non-story.