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Favorite Photos?


canbelto

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I don't think I'm alone in obsessively searching the web for beautiful pictures of my favorite ballerinas and dancers. Whenever I'm in a bad mood I take a look at them, and all of a sudden I'm in a good mood again. I thought it'd be fun to share some of our favorite ballet photos:

This has to be one of my all-time favorites. I just love the body language between them. It looks so romantic:

Marguerite and Armand aka Margot and Rudi

I also love this picture of Fonteyn taking a curtain call. What a beautiful smile.

Moving away from F&N ...

I just adore this picture Cojocaru as Giselle. The way she's holding the flowers, the beautiful grande jete position ... It's just perfect.

I love this picture of Altynai Asylmuratova's smile.

Allegra Kent and Jacque d'Amboise in Afternoon of a Faun. What a beautiful position.

Love this iconic picture of Karsavina and Nijinsky in Giselle.

Adore this picture of a very young Sizova and Nureyev.

I love this candid shot of Sylvie Guillem.

Vishneva looks so beautiful in this lilac dress!

And finally, the incredibly beautiful Alla Shelest as Giselle.

Ok I'm done! What about yours?

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It's of Makarova, and it's hanging in my sewing/computer room. However, I can't get it onto the Board. It's Don Q's Act III, she in a grand jete with right arm raised and left hand carrying a fan. The background is black so you can't see the floor. Her "splits" in the jete is exactly 180 degrees: right leg extended to the front, straight, foot arch; left left behind her, beautifully turned out and just a tad bent at the knee yet all of it perpendicular to the floor with her toes just slightly above her heel. It is perfection.

Giannina

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I also love this photo of Tanaquil LeClercq because it's so different from the usual ballet poses. I don't know which role she's dancing, but she looks so gorgeous, yet quirky. It's enchanting.

Looks as if she was clowning during the photo shoot..the costume is Bouree Fantasque and the shoot was with Jerome Robbins..there are others online as well as in books.....

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I also love this photoof Tanaquil LeClercq because it's so different from the usual ballet poses

Yes---and it also captures what made her so different from the usual ballet dancers.....that's the LeClercq I saw, with all her quirkiness and wit. :)

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leclercq's pose in her BOURREE F costume may be a little free form but the choroegraphy she created in the ballet's first movement included any number of witty touches, including flexed feet, if mem. serves.

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I also love this series of photos Marc Haegmann took of the Mariinsky R&J featuring Evgenia Obratsova. She looks gorgeous! She looks like the Kirov version of Alina Cojocaru. You know, totally enchanting, weightless, ethereal ballerinas.

Also love this photo of Allegra Kent's penchee. Now that was a 6o'clock before anyone did 6 o'clocks! Looking back now, she really started a trend. :)

Of all the photos of Maya Plisetskaya's incredible grande jete, this is the best! Wow!

And anyone know what Diana Adams was dancing in this photo? She certainly looks very sultry, in a way that is very unique among ballerinas of her time.

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the photo of adams shows her, i believe, as Cybele in Tudor's UNDERTOW, a role she created in 1945, which may be the date of the picture.

Isn't that the costume for Medusa?---Nana Gollner originated the role, but Adams danced it later.

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indeed, i was confused, and stand corrected; my first-hand familiarity with UNDERTOW isn't extensive. i took my info from chazin-bennahum, who lists adams as originating 'cybele' however the same book also shows, as indicated above, than gollner created the role of medusa and a photo in the book from '46 shows her in the costume adams wears in the photo posted here; thus confirming the medusa identification.

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Richard,

This is a stunning photo and a similar Schiavone one IS used by ABT in their literature. It is a color version of the same "instant" from Manon, but I believe it is not the same photograph. Look at Diana's right hand. Please look at the literature and tell me if you agree. I believe the B&W is superior.

There is something about some photos of ballet which freeze and "extend" the moment and allow us to see so much more than when it flies by with the music.

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Richard,

This is a stunning photo and a similar Schiavone one IS used by ABT in their literature. It is a color version of the same "instant" from Manon, but I believe it is not the same photograph. Look at Diana's right hand. Please look at the literature and tell me if you agree. I believe the B&W is superior.

There is something about some photos of ballet which freeze and "extend" the moment and allow us to see so much more than when it flies by with the music.

Yes, you are right. I pulled out my subscription brochure. Vishneva's backward placed arm crosses her midsection in the color photo and in the B&W crosses her raised leg.

Also in the color, some of Malakhov's torso is in fog.

I think BOTH are wonderful shots, I just love the arrangement of all the lines, including the ropey things

that separate the lovers from all the ghosts in the early part of the scene.

And I agree with your comment about ballet photography. I love seeing a photo from something I've seen and finding the "frozen moment" to be something that I didn't catch during the performance but wonderful none the less. It's almost like a dividend.

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For me, still images of ballet are very interesting visually, because ballet and dance is MOSTLY about movement, although there are some "frozen" positions.

The movement carves out space, form and volume in visually exciting ways... absolutely no doubt about that.

However, the still image becomes more graphic... like a painting or a sculpture which can be even referential to the movement it was "borrowed" from. The photo I noted seems to have this quality and it makes me wonder if choreographers ever see this when they "compose" ballet.

This is something unique to ballet. It doesn't work for opera, because at best you get a freeze frame of the stage during a performance.. the music is lost. The same is true, of course, for music performed and captured in a still photograph. But ballet CAN and DOES live in the still image because it IS fundamentally a visual medium... though built on music.

Lately, I wonder why ballet photography is not a more "developed" genre using images such as the Manon one noted above... It would appear that many visually sensitive people could be "pulled into" ballet based on seeing some of these compelling images... as opposed to balletomanes finding a means to recall a ballet moment.

And these images can stand alone as works of art as well.

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I've posted elsewhere re favorite photographers so there is some overlap. I also tend to prefer B&W because of the many more levels of contrast available, but there are some color photos noted below I remember well...

NUREYEV & FONTEYN: Too many to name, but some prominent favorites from "Marguerite & Armand"

BARYSHNIKOV:

1) Stretching etc., a photoshoot by Crickmay done for book about the making of "White Nights". The lighting and 'contained power/motion' within the stillness of the poses is incredible.

2) The B&W photos of "Baryshnikov at Work": esp. rehearsing Other Dances (beautiful epaulement/line in a tendu en avant croise or (can't remember which)efface?), Act2 Giselle (love that extra-long cape--cum Nureyev?), Pas de Duke.

MAKAROVA:

1) From her autobiography: Cover photo, Dying Swan, Swan Lake. (After the pics of Pavlova--my alltime favorites of course--I love Makarova's ultimate grace, inherent fragility, and yet tensile strength in those iconic poses.)

PLISETSKAYA:

In my program from a Bolshoi performance in Japan, c. 1969-72? I presume Dying Swan or Swan Lake in arabesque, photo taken from behind, single downspot high-contrast. (I think it was the dramatic lighting/contrast and stillness of the pose that caught my attention & her in a split second of concentration between movements.)

GELSEY & IVAN NAGY: studio pics: Romeo & Juliet, and Leaves Are Fading in (I think) "25 Years of ABT" book? Both pictures are of lifts (pics maybe by Waldman?)--and two of THE most expressive dancers in ABT show how continuity of motion, and communication between partners can be inherent in a still photo.

ANGEL CORELLA & XIOMARA REYES in the Macmillan R&J bedroom pdd, taken by Rosalie O'Connor and used several times by ABT for Met season one-sheets, or programs. The dark background--(in the original which may have been taken from the wings)--and almost downspot lighting throwing the two lovers into relief, the intensity of the action / blur of the movement as she slides downwards, and the stillness of Romeo's so contained thoughtful expression in complete contrast to the almost desparate emotional involvement of Juliet's hand brushing his cheek. Though no dancing is shown, it's a "wow" picture on many points technically & artistically. (Which I guess the PR people realized too.)

Probably can think of lots more later; just some of the ones that came to mind quickly.

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