i was lucky enough to work with the talented photographer Lar Rattray on designing her new website, and in the process of sorting through & curating all her photographs i fell in love with this story that she did about ballerinas at the Cape Town City Ballet. i asked Lar for a bit of background about the Swans. you can see the entire story here.
I know I’m not alone in saying that I’ve always been drawn to what happens ‘behind the velvet curtain’. It’s one of those inexplicable childlike fascinations… so I literally leapt at the chance to go backstage with a friend who was dancing for Cape Town City Ballet at the time. This was years ago, I was fresh out of art school and had to borrow a camera. The dance company was in the final throes of rehearsals before their opening of Swan Lake… and for days I hid in the wings amidst a sea of quiet chaos and sweat, enchanted by these weightless beings. Their pure disregard for inhibition was bewitching; but their raw stamina, nothing short of astonishing. I will never forget the seamless transition between the animal like exhaustion I witnessed backstage, to the seemingly effortless and untiring grace seen by the audience onstage.
