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DANCE

A source of energy, free from any predictability of origin, slide down and hit the collar bones. Without hesitation, they shoot outwards in an immediate manner and light up the whole arms. Fingers stretch further and become an autonomous expression. Takayuki Nakatake snapped the remarkable long jointed fingers of Kazuo Ohno against  the dim light of a rehearsal space in 1999. Step elsewhere.




Takayuki Nakatake, Hand of Kazuo Ohno, 1999



Imogen Cunningham, Martha Graham Wearing A Crocheted Dress Art Print, 1931
© The Imogen Cunningham Trust.


On a hot afternoon, bothered by flies, Martha Graham performed outside the barn at her mother’s home. Imogen Cunningham made nearly ninety photographs that day, extending her earlier studies of plants into the terrain of the human body. 

I wanted to begin not with characters or ideas, but with movements …I wanted significant movement. I did not want it to be beautiful or fluid. I wanted it to be fraught with inner meaning, with excitement and surge.

- Martha Graham


Dance carries a vitality that trespasses time and location. This enigmatic possibility puts generations of photographers under its spell. They keep shooting, moving within the dance of life itself. Yet the exchange does not move in one direction alone. The seductive power of photography also feeds back into the dancer. Kazuo Ohno, for instance, did not mind being photographed at extremely close range during his performances.


Xavier Miserachs, Antoñita "La Singla", 1962

Image Courtesy: MACBA (Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona)



Signed photograph of Vaslav Nijinsky in Le Spectre de la Rose, by Bert, 1913. Valentine Gross Archive, © Victoria & Albert Museum, London


Alfred Eisenstaedt - LIFE Archives, George Balanchine's School American Ballet (1936)



Leonide Massine’s “Le Tricorne” with sets by Picasso.Credit...Little Steidl
“Ballet,” Brodovitch’s only book, includes 104 pictures — shot in New York in the late 1930s — of the Ballets Russes companies that were formed after Diaghilev’s 1929 death. The poet and dance critic Edwin Denby, whose essayis reprinted in the new edition, wrote, “There are many fine moments that seemed like the bright afterglow of the 30-year-long Diaghilev epic and at the end of an atmosphere in dancing we came to know as Ballets Russes or Russian ballet.” Denby also describes the artistic ambition with which “Ballet” was conceived. Brodovitch, he wrote, “was trying to catch the elusive stage atmosphere that only ballet has, as the dancers in action created it.” He wanted to render ballet magic in visual terms, Denby added, to show “the unconscious grace and spontaneous animation all through that turns a choreography from a lesson into a dance.”




The expansion of physical awareness led by dancers could be an enlightening force, setting forth a journey beyond the limits of our ingrained human sensibility. We would imagine a similar phenomenon that happened on the very stage when Alexey Brodovitch was snapping the ballerinas of Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo during their 1935–1937 American tours. Ballet, the landmark photo book was made: The horizontal format, with lateral images from the same scene printed full bleed, creates a cinematic immersion; as the viewer flips the pages, a rhythm emerges, acting as a portal which journeys us not just back to the stage, but into Brodovitch’s own memory of dance.. As Edwin Denby wrote in the accompanying text, “he was not photographing strangers. He was photographing his family; and that is why his pictures have so intimate a tone.”.




A 1940 photograph of Martha Graham, Erick Hawkins and Merce Cunningham, dressed for “El Penitente.”

Image Courtesy: Via Martha Graham Dance Company




Ugo Mulas, Trisha Brown nursing her baby after Thanksgiving dinner at Rauschenberg’s studio 1965




Peter Moore, The action in SoHo: Trisha Brown and Carol Goodden performing Brown's “Leaning Duet” on Wooster Street, 1970.


Either off or on stage, multidimensional conversations are in flux between dancers and photographers, even spectators, each speaking in its own intensity and theatricality. This dynamic finds resonance in Estelle Hanania´s collaborative book with Gisele Vienne ¨This Causes Consciousness to Fracture¨. Rich colors and rhythmic sequencing create an immersive experience, inviting the viewer into the pulse of the work. For this Dance issue, we invited Hanania to curate the photobook sections, sharing her personal way of seeing and offering an intimate perspective on the vitality of dance. 




Estelle Hanania, This Causes Consciousness to Fracture, Spector Books, 2023.





Paul Fusco, Parades and Changes, 1970, performed by San Francisco Dancer's Workshop for the opening of the University Art Museum, Berkeley.










TWYLA THARP: DANCE photographs by Richard Avedon with a text by Thomas Babe



Tea Dance', photograph by Elaine Constantine, from 'SHOWstudio' portfolio, London 2001



Still from Rineke Dijkstra, Marianna (The Fairy Doll), 2014



Rineke Dijkstra, Marianna and Sasha, Kingisepp, Russia, November 2, 2014
In Marianna, a young ballerina practices The Fairy Doll, taking instructions from her off-camera teacher. As the instructor drills her further and further, for nearly twenty minutes, the girl maintains her resolve and concentration, although as the video reaches its end, she clearly attempts to ward off strain or even frustration from appearing on her face. In the accompanying photograph, the only large-scale one in the exhibition, Marianna and Sasha, Kingisepp, Russia, November 2, 2014, the ballerina and her instructor look directly at the camera, the former maintaining her poise and determination.

Source: Aaron Peck, ¨Rineke Dijkstra’s Captivating Videos Portray the Gestures of Youth¨, Aperture 2023.



Harley Weir, Dancers from Ballet national de Marseille direction (La)Horde wearing 50 years of costume archivee, 2023. 
Creative Direction by Alice Gavin, Styling by Laëtitia Gimenez. 


Can someone else’s gaze make these movements live again?

Can a sequence of images, color, and rhythm create its own choreography for the eye?

If you have seen dance countless times, could a photobook still make you feel its pulse anew, or even ignite a surprise in how you perceive movement and emotion?



A dancer with weights on her knees, stretching at class, 1960s. Copyright Colin Jones / Topfoto.co.uk


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