ABT: Quotes with Character

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“QUOTES WITH

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Marcelo Gomes The theater is dark. The orchestra is booming. And the audience is scarce, save a few company members. One woman is hunched behind a camera in the center of the seats. It’s a dress rehearsal at American Ballet Theatre, and Nancy Ellison is working her magic.

As the music plays and world-class dancers execute the movement, one sound permeates the ears of those in the theater—the clack of a camera shutter. The moments Ellison captures collect as files on a memory card; files that she will meticulously comb through afterward, looking for the emotion combined with the line of the body that add to the unique power a dance photograph can possess.

A collection of these photos can be see in her new book, In Classic Style: The Splendor of American Ballet Theatre. The documentation of the company spans a year-and-a-half of performances, but Ellison only spent a total of twenty days shooting the photos. That’s not to imply the process was a breeze. Capturing an art form (especially one that is defined by movement) through a collection of still photographs presents a challenge that only the most accomplished of photographers can tackle.

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So what happens after the photographer’s job is finished, when the book is published and the dancers are left to reflect on the results? movmnt’s Matthew Murphy sits down with the dancers of American Ballet Theatre to see what goes into making the magic that Ellison captures in her book.

I literally wasn’t performing in my own skin; I was painted to appear darker than I actually am. Each act you get more and more paint on your body because you have less and less clothing on. This picture is from such a crucial moment in the show, as it’s the first time you are seen on stage. You have to stay in the moment and immerse yourself in the character like you are experiencing it for the first time, but you don’t even look like

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ABT CHARACTER”

ARACTER” “QUOTES WITH

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David Hallberg This section of James Kudelka’s Cinderella has to be the craziest running, entering, exiting, leaping, turning marathon I have yet to experience in a ballet. The moment I leapt into the wing (right after this picture) I was running to the next entrance, which was about eight seconds later.

No matter what entrance or exit I did during this section, I was always dancing with a shoe in my

HALLBERG REYES

Jacquelyn Reyes

This is one of the most dramatic scenes I’ve ever seen. Romeo has just killed Tybalt, and Lady Capulet comes down and discovers his dead body.

The biggest challenge is staying in character whether you feel [the performance] that night or not. Sometimes it’s easier to feel the emotion and immerse yourself in the scene than others. Not many people witness a murder in real life, so it’s a difficult reality to create as a dancer. That being said, you can certainly pull on the emotional and physical fatigue that an eight-week season creates when doing this scene.

Stella Abrera Apart from keeping an eye on Cinderella for a year as an understudy, I didn’t have much time to prepare. I was officially put on warning to replace an injured dancer about two weeks before the show. I frantically watched as many videos as I could, every spare minute I had. Rehearsals were squeezed in when possible. In a nutshell, my whole Cinderella experience, from beginning to end, was a whirlwind.

This was my first leading role in a full-length ballet. Of course, having experienced injury before and knowing how devastating it is to miss any shows, my

ABRERA

Sarah Smith The stairs are a big hit with the peasants in Swan Lake. The tendency when the pas de trois music starts is for the dancers to flock to the stairs to get a spot so they can sit and watch.

Having a moment to rest during this exhausting ballet is crucial to the female corps, as we are on our toes two hours a show, eight shows a week. Unfortunately, as the ballet has been staged, my partner and I stand behind the fence while everyone

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SMITH

RADETSKY Sascha Radetsky Iago isn’t the type of guy to bring home to meet the parents.

Much of the choreography between Iago and his wife Emlia is physically and sexually abusive.

My Emelia was Stella Abrera, who is betrothed to me offstage as well, and she gamely withstood the rapes and beatings that I had to dish out as the evercharming, misogynistc Iago. Behaving so nastily towards Stella posed a formidable challenge to my conscience and wellbeing, as did the post-performance conversation I had with her father.

Iago is a character layered with so many dark, complex emotions. He’s more complicated than most villains, and—dare

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