A dancer doing a jeté against the New York skyline.
in Paris.
Frantic rush-hour commuters sidestepping a flying ballerina.
Unexpected, joyful and utterly inspiring, these are some of the images photographer Lisa Tomasetti created with Australian Ballet dancers on their international tours. And now she is sharing them with two major exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne.
For seven years Tomasetti was the official photographer on the Australian Ballet’s tours of Paris, Tokyo and New York and snapped the dancers in performance and during training. However, she also wanted to create images “where the classical form of the dancer was juxtaposed against the urban landscape of these iconic cities”.
Well known for her work with artists of all forms, Tomasetti says she loves shooting dancers because of their athleticism, grace and eagerness to collaborate. “They are up for anything, whether it be putting them in the middle of Shinagawa station in Tokyo in peak hour, or posing in the middle of Columbus Circle in New York.”
She has vivid memories of creating these works. “All these memories are tinged with a lot of laughter; on Brooklyn Bridge photographing Amy Harris leaping, I couldn’t believe I was paid for this,” she says. “Other memories are of the [Swan Lake] cygnets literally stopping traffic on Sixth Avenue, with a taxi driver calling out to us that we’d made him so happy! As well as Reiko Hombo leaping in front of theNYPD cop who looks like something out of central casting and followed my direction to a tee.”
Behind the Scenes: The Australian Ballet on the International Stage, 7–30 March, James Makin Gallery, Collingwood, Victoria; April 15–28, Salerno Gallery, Glebe, NSW.
Published in Vogue Australia April 2013
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