In Balanchine's Steps
Dance and the power of continuity
I think I’ve always felt the magnetic pull of photographs. As a kid, I spent hour after hour poring over the pictures in books about ballet, staring at images of dancers on stage, in studios, in motion and at rest. I scrutinized their bodies, faces, costumes, shoes, rehearsal clothes. I studied and pondered their surroundings, thinking about how the spaces they were in might have affected the way those dancers felt at that moment. The expression on a dancer’s face or the way they stood or sat— their body language as a human, not an artist— made me imagine what they were thinking and feeling, both at that specific time and in a broader sense. I felt I knew them, sort of, and maybe understood a little bit about how they felt situated in their world.
Without realizing at the time, I was also honing my eye for ballet and forming my own aesthetic taste. What I was learning in my ballet classes was physical; what I saw on stage in performances was emotional; but being able to stare for as long as I wanted at a crystallized split-second segment of ballet taught me about detail: line, expression, subtlety.
Dance photographs captured my heart, my imagination, and triggered my sense of possibility. I still remember specific ones that made a special impression: a very young Gelsey Kirkland in a student performance, another very young Merrill Ashley in class, Suzanne Farrell in Don Quixote. I noticed, without judgement, differences in dancers’ lines, proportions, affectations, and even technique, which is put under the microscope by the camera’s lens.
And now, of course, I feel more passionate about the power of dance photography— and photography in general— than ever. My sister, Flynn Larsen, is a photographer (Flynn did some photography for Pacific Northwest Ballet when I was in that company and took one of my favorite pictures of myself of all time). And, as you loyal readers know, for the past three years I’ve been working with former American Ballet Theatre photographer Gene Schiavone on our book of photographs and essays spotlighting thirty-three dancers he’s worked with over the course of his career.
I was very excited to have the chance to explore another new dance photography book recently that is, like my and Gene’s book, Infinite Steps, also a testament to the significance of photographs to an ephemeral art form. In Balanchine’s Steps: How The George Balanchine Foundation Preserves His Genius, was created in celebration of the 30th anniversary of The George Balanchine Foundation’s Video Archives. Since 1995, the Foundation has orchestrated coaching sessions between dancers who originated roles in Balanchine ballets and the dancers of today who will perform and keep them vital, vibrant, and relevant. The sessions are video recorded, along with interviews with the originators, and archived for posterity. And— as we see in this book— there has (almost always— some early sessions were not photographed) been a photographer in the studio too, discretely snapping away. A few weeks ago, I spoke with the book’s photo editor and designer, Kyle Froman, who is himself a former New York City Ballet dancer. Kyle and I share a sense of photos as the most striking record of ballet— both the pieces of choreography and the artists who perform them.
I wrote an article about the book and my conversation with Kyle, which appears now in The Ballet Herald. I’ll spare you a rehash of my thoughts and let you read them for yourself in the magazine.
I do want to mention something Kyle said, though, that I think pinpoints the magical way photography enables the continuity of dance. By plucking out slices to treasure without interrupting its flow, “Things morph, whether you try to freeze them or not,” he said. “They change over time, and they should, depending on who is dancing and where we are in this world. But some things should never change.”
Infinite Steps: Thirty-Three Dancers And Their Lives In Ballet debuts March 17. Pre-order from University Press of Florida (use code 31SAVE for 20% off) or your favorite bookseller (I love it when people ask their local bookshop to stock my books! And bookshop.org offers discounts, too.) Or, yes, Amazon.
North Carolina-area folks, would you like to join me at Quail Ridge Books on pub day? I’ll read excerpts and talk with University of North Carolina School of the Arts assistant Dean of Dance, Jared Redick, about themes I saw running throughout Infinite Steps and that we’ve both encountered in our own ballet careers.
And Asheville people, mark March 22 on your calendar if you’d like to attend my reading and book signing at Malaprop’s Books and Cafe with my friend and fellow dancer, teacher and choreographer Megan Jones Medford.
It is a fascinating relationship between dance and photography - love this!
Preordered!