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)