Illustrating Ballet

So I talked below about this art director thing. I really think there's something there, especially in the linking and collaborating part of it all.

Last week, Tom and I went to the Mixed Bill at the Royal Opera House. I had spent a lot of time reading the reviews. As noted in previous posts, these reviews spend most of their word counts focusing on the second ballet, Live Fire Exercise, by Wayne McGregor. They seemed to be quite enamored with the technology, and all of the reviews devote at least a paragraph to the ballet's beginning, in which there aren't any dancers on stage. The reviews also feature versions of the same photo — dancers who look disproportionately large compared to the backdrop of fire, desert and explosions.

Now, we all know that you'd be crazy to take pictures at a ballet performance like this. Not allowed. And I can understand why critics would have a picture to go along with the review. It's another element to draw you in. But what really is a picture in terms of ballet? It captures less than a second of a moment you probably wouldn't recognize exactly if you were watching the ballet. Because, after all, ballet is about the movement and not about a static image. The images used with reviews are also a bit...unfaithful. Many times they're stock images from the ballet companies that of course, portray things in the best light. So before the performance, I started thinking about other ways to visually document it. I thought about what I've done with BodyTalk or as a designer when it comes to capturing something I, myself, cannot capture. That's when, suddenly, it made sense: commission an illustrator.

Tom was coming with me to the ballet anyway, and he is, in fact, an illustrator. So before we went to the ballet, we talked about a style and how we'd go about documenting. The goal was to make the experience off-the-cuff and unexpected. I proposed that everytime I tapped Tom on the shoulder, he would start sketching, for however long he liked. The goal was not to be greatly detailed. It was about capturing a moment I also happened to be taking notes on. I didn't want him to guess what I was writing. I just wanted him to sketch what he saw.

It was challenging because — especially with a new work like LFE — you can't prepare yourself for how you'll react. It seems that most of these critics had their reviews written before they had settled into their seats. But this approach to design writing mode was about being of-the-moment and intuitive. It was about reacting, because the reflection would follow.

I didn't think of it at the time, but the 10 sketches we now have are now these permanent visual records of the performance. They encapsulate ballet's un-capturable qualities — there's only so much you can illustrate while the dancers move, and you cannot rewind. They themselves become a critique on the visual elements of dance reviews. I would say that their subjectivity (what Tom chose to draw and what he didn't draw) isn't any more subjective than the photographs the Royal Ballet has edited down for you to see.