Intimate Behind-The-Scenes Pictures from the World of Skilled Ballet

Ballet dancer Cassandra Trenary has been drawn to cameras since taking part in along with her father’s camcorder as a baby, rising up in Lawrenceville, Georgia. But it wasn’t till she was given a Nikon F from 1959 in 2017, whereas working as an expert ballerina with American Ballet Theatre in New York, that her love for taking footage was actually ignited. Now, after 15 years with the corporate – 5 as principal – and getting ready to maneuver to Vienna, she displays on the physique of labor she created in “sacred moments” of downtime backstage, debuts, promotions and ultimate performances – “a chapter in all of our lives that I think we will look back on and be very grateful to have”.

Being a dancer with ABT over such a tenure afforded Trenary belief along with her topics and a deep information of ballet that no exterior skilled photographer – irrespective of how expert – may replicate. “I’m so incredibly grateful that my colleagues and my friends have this trust in me,” she says “We know each other so well. These are the people that I love and they know that I love them.”

This implicit belief has earned her a vantage level within the quick-change sales space, the place a few of her favorite photos had been taken. “To me, [photographing backstage in the quick-change booth] feels like a privilege that someone will allow me to be in there while that’s happening.” In this intimate area, dancers try to get into the mindset of their character whereas they offer their our bodies over to the fingers that rush in to vary their costumes. 

“ABT is known for their narrative ballets,” explains Trenary, “so I can speak from my personal experience. When I’m on stage, I’m just completely immersed. Juliet is a really good example because there’s one very intense quick change from the ballroom scene into the balcony pas de deux, which is the famous duet between Romeo and Juliet. You come off stage, and you’re trying to remember what time period you’re in, how old you are, the experience you just had. And then before you know it, you’re back on stage, and you’re in a completely different costume. And then it’s supposed to be nighttime, and you’re supposed to feel the dew on your skin.”

“So much of my job is to exist in other people’s visions, and so I think [photography] is a way to share my vision – and that is a very vulnerable thing to do” –  Cassandra Trenary

Her information of what she’s photographing, each as an insider at ABT and a dancer herself, guides her lens to much less apparent particulars: the marks left on our bodies after three hours in costumes, the hesitation of a dancer in a doorway that results in the stage, lots of of performances right into a run of Swan Lake. Trenary’s method is mirrored within the openness and naivety of her photographic method, which, through the years,  has developed via experimentation.

“They’re all a bit technically imperfect,” she says of her pictures. “There was a time when I was quite literally just experimenting and playing and seeing if this camera even works, and some of those portraits are some of my favourites. I was a soloist at the time and I had many, many hours to kill in the theatre.” More current experiments have been with movement blur, and Trenary discovered herself drawn to the painterly really feel it may possibly create, significantly with color movie. 

Learning one thing new has been extremely liberating for Trenary. “Photography is such a relief and a joy to me,” she shares. “I don’t have to be perfect at it, so the feedback, whether positive or negative, I can take and use what feels right to me. But if someone dislikes my dancing, that’s tough to take,” she laughs. With inventive bravery comes new vulnerability. No longer capable of conceal behind a personality, Trenary is uncovered. “So much of my job is to exist in other people’s visions, and so I think [photography] is a way to share my vision – and that is a very vulnerable thing to do.” 

Trenary has discovered power and inspiration within the work of photographers she admires. “They do it in such a profound way that feels generous,” she says of her favourites, Nan Goldin, Francesca Woodman, and Vivian Maier – all photographers whose extremely intimate work was created for creation’s sake, slightly than with an viewers in thoughts. 

American Ballet Theatre and its dancers have been documented in myriad methods over the many years, notably by Magnum photographer Eve Arnold for John Fraser’s 1988 guide on Baryshnikov’s period, or the quite a few portraits – together with of Trenary – shot by main style and portrait photographers. However, the intimacy and intuitive understanding in Trenary’s work has extra in frequent with Goldin’s documentation of her buddies of their properties and Woodman’s susceptible self-exploration – and feels completely modern in a images panorama that values the lived experiences these behind the digital camera deliver to the image-making course of. 

As she prepares to maneuver to Vienna to tackle her position as principal on the Vienna State Opera, Trenary is interested by how images will form that have. “Entering a new company, I’m going to have to get to know everybody. And I’m curious about how bringing my camera into this space will inform the way I capture people, not being as close to them. Or even just a new city.” Her digital camera shall be each a conduit for connection, and a device for documenting her subsequent chapter.