Dance in Vogue

This exhibition has grown from the collection issue of the same name Dance in Vogue which has been just published and has already become a rarity. A year ago when Vogue editorial office started working on dance issue, nobody expected to find such a great number of photographic masterpieces on ballet themes in the archives of Publishing House Condé Nast. The editorial had to select hundreds of thousands, dozens of hundreds. Working on the issue, Vogue has naturally focused on the interaction of ballet and fashion and has accentuated the Russian theme.

We have seen classic ballerinas becoming icons of style (fashion idols), sort of top models. Maya Plisetskaya, the one who was posing for Avedon and Beaton, in the preface to Dance in Vogue said: «Nowadays in ballet world it is fashionable to be thin and tall. This is the ideal option, since the dress fits a hanger best of all». This has been the first fashion revolution born in ballet world. The second one has led stage costumes with their barbaric brightness, erotism and courage on to the podium. The fashion of the XX century is hardly to be imagined without Russian Seasons by Dyagilev, thus, Lev Bakst told: «Today in the theatre one should watch instead of listening». At that time everybody was watching the stage and they keep on watching till the moment. Fashion designers looked for inspiration in the great choreographer’s works, ballet artists sketched costumes for defile, designers decorated ballet performances. The present exhibition has another accent and aims.

These pictures collected together can tell a lot about the human body. The photographers are fascinated by its sculptural beauty, then by its kinetic features, then by its ability of drawing intricate hieroglyphs. Even when they take photos of frozen faces of the dancers, they still examine the birth of a movement. Annie Leibovitz once said: «It is almost impossible to take a photo of a dance, since it is born from the air and disappears in the air». Probably the desire to make the impossible was the reason for the greatest photographers to shoot ballet again and again in an attempt to catch the air on to the lens of their photo cameras.

And all the main masters of the XX century have taken pictures of ballet: De Meyer, Horst, Stiff, Beaton, Avedon, Penn, Parkinson. Between ballet and photography there has always been a powerful attraction, which tended to grow into passion. Love affair of photography and ballet is a story of dramatic relationship between statics and dynamics. And, in the end, it is an attempt of both art forms to increase their limits on uniting.

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