Saturday, October 14, 2023

Dance (soloists)

Cecil Beaton
Margot Fonteyn
ca. 1963
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Jane Bown
Natalia Makarova
1977
bromide print
National Portrait Gallery, London

Jillian Edelstein
Bryony Brind
1988
bromide print
National Portrait Gallery, London

Arnold Genthe
Irma Duncan
(Isadora Duncan Company)
ca. 1915-16
gelatin silver print
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Sasha
Alexandra Danilova in Swan Lake
(Ballets Russes)
ca. 1926
gelatin silver print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Horst P. Horst
Alicia Markova
1941
dye transfer print
National Portrait Gallery, London

Emil Otto Hoppé
Tamara Karsavina in The Firebird
(Ballets Russes)
1911
gelatin silver print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Antony Armstrong-Jones, Earl of Snowden
Tamara Karsavina
1958
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, London

Barbara Morgan
Martha Graham in Satyric Festival
1935
gelatin silver print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Lois Greenfield
Andre de Groat's Rope Dance Translations
1981
gelatin silver print
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Numa Blanc & Cie
Anton Dolin in Daphnis and Chloe
(Ballets Russes)
1926
gelatin silver print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Carl Van Vechten
Anton Dolin in Spanish Dance
1941
gelatin silver print
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Barbara Morgan
José Limón in Mexican Suite
1944
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Robert Mapplethorpe
Alan Lynes, Peter Reed Ballet Company
1979
gelatin silver print
Tate Gallery

Annie Leibovitz
Mikhail Baryshnikov
1990
platinum palladium print
Princeton University Art Museum

Charles Gerschel
Vaslav Nijinsky in Jeux
(Ballets Russes costume by Léon Bakst)
1913
gelatin silver print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Nijinsky's Solo

I push the Urals of the limits
to Procrustean valley, peaks,
designed by Diaghilev, designed by Bakst,
a Petrouchka moon in Russian pearl and malachite.

Still, no choreograph of peaceful sleep –
just rehearsal, out of sync and step,
vexation's tap of walking-stick and tempo, leap
and arabesque manqué to pedestrian limp,

tinny piano's hammer-rap of sprung
rhythm's straying knuckle. I disobey
strict metronomes of bio-clocks' ballet:
moonsets', sunrites' Jeux et Faune.

I partner, from jeté to metatarsal cramp,
the body-politic of perfection's peninsulas and bays,
distances of lakes, tutus of swans and snows –
the vernacular of mountains, foothills, villages of dream.

– Marvin Solomon (1993)