This is What All Ballet Portraits Should Look Like

I mean... weightless grands jetes and perfectly curved arches are nice and all... but come on:

This is so much better!

Mademoiselle Nelova, 1929

Maybe She's Born With it... Maybe it's Photoshop

From this Huffington Post article: Anna Pavlova in a famous picture you've probably seen before. But now in high enough resolution to see the century-old "photoshop" job on her pointe shoes! She was famous for having her photos retouched to make her feet look extra pointy and small, because she got a certain amount of crap for wearing modern-style shoes. This same crap-flinging tendency still exists in ballet, of course, but now it's mostly aimed at inovations like plastics and anything that reduces your pain level. Because dancers are crazy mofos.
Anyway, I just thought this was great.

An Ode to Vintage Ballet Photography

Modern dance photography is all about captured movement. Graceful arabesques, dramatic leaps, and that fraction of a second when a dancer is perched just so on the front edge of her pointe shoe platform. Photography meant to inspire and thrill. To make you feel like you have seen a dance, not a photo. Dare I say it? This sort of fabulousness is ... well. Not really all that attainable for most of us.

from Gene Schiavone Photography

But Oh! for the days of classic ballet photography! Where a dancer could simply stand in her gloriously ornate costume and still cause a stirring in your heart:

Ornate and GIGANTIC. Did I mention gigantic?

How many modern dancers have even 

worn a costume big enough that you can't

get through the door?

I ask you.

Or better yet: lean subtly against the wall. Cuz mama don't need to be supporting her own weight for this whooooole dang long exposure. Walls were invented for a reason, right? Use 'em.

Look, if Margot Fonteyn can lean subtly against a wall then so can I.

Or. You know. Not so subtly:

Pretty Pictures

I just found these photos online and thought I would share them here, as there is at least a tenuous ballet connection.
The photographer is Gregory Maiofis, and he has lots of great (and sometimes pretty weird) stuff out there. As for the ballet-related ones I was particularly taken with these two, of a ballerina and bear (you can get down with the symbolism all up in yo bidness or not, up to you):

Taste for Russian Ballet

Figurative Painting

I love them both for different reasons. Anyway, check him out!