It’s all a blur: Baryshnikov Photography at 401 Projects
Mikhail Baryshnikov has been king of dance ever since his 1967 debut at the Mariinksy Theater. Part of Baryshnikov’s intrigue has always been his ability to connect any entertainment to art – and to do so brilliantly – be it a hit HBO show or a Sundance movie with chef Alice Waters. Over the past 40 years we’ve known Baryshnikov as the star of the Kirov Ballet, New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, as Artistic Director, as an actor and as an entrepreneur. Baryshnikov the dance photographer seemed a natural addition to the canon.
Baryshnikov’s photographs of Merce Cunningham’s modern dance company were displayed at 401 Projects from March 18 to May 4. Shot on a traditional 35mm camera, Baryshnikov prefers the blurry, untraditional look of his photos to capture the elation and movement of dance.
Although Baryshnikov’s goal in taking blurred movement photographs may have been to give the viewer a better sense of the dancers’ motion, the photographs don’t reveal anything particularly emotional or novel about the dancers or Merce Cunningham’s work. The photos were aesthetically pleasing in the silkiness of the color and the misty lines of the dancers’ bodies against the washed backgrounds. One series of photographs, prominently displayed on the far end of the small gallery, showed a small group of silvery dancers intertwined and running amongst each other. As a group, the photographs were dreamlike and pretty, but not very interesting.
Other series were more brightly colored, with dark background and fluorescent bodies caught mid-movement. In each one, the dancer was caught not in a pose, but on his or her way to one. In most of the photos the color is distorted strongly enough so that the viewer can make out the shape of the bodies, but not a face, expression or the difference between someone’s arm and someone else’s leg. There is a strong sense of the transience of each movement, and for a moment I’m pulled into the photograph and into the dance, but that moment too is short lived.
Baryshnikov stayed away from typically crystalline photos in order to convey the excitement of dance, but the blurriness doesn’t create this effect any more than brilliantly shot and focused photographs we see all the time in the dance world. Photographers like Lois Greenfield, who can capture every precise ripple in a dancer’s muscle or curve of an instep, are positively stunning. Harvey Edwards proved that a duct-taped ballet shoe and a ripped up legwarmer, or a crouched-over dancer can speak volumes about the life of a dancer.
Why were prints taken on a regular 35mm camera blown up to such large proportions? At relatively close range the viewer could easily see how pixilated the photographs were, and the intimate size of the gallery encouraged visitors to look at the photographs from close range. It’s unfortunate enough that we no longer use gelatin to create perfect, satiny prints, so blowing up the photos so large as to distort the images’ quality certainly did the photographs no favors.
The photographs are presented with the explanation that the blurriness is intentional, but the blurred lines seem more like the result of an amateur photographer with a mediocre camera. As a dancer, I’ve taken plenty of photos of friends dancing on stage, and between bright lights, rapid movement and user-friendly commercial digital cameras, the photos have mostly come out nebulous. Like in Baryshnikov’s photos, bodies blur in streaks of color as lights and dancers move faster than the shutter. Baryshnikov’s photographs reminded me much of my own, and I couldn’t help think that the exhibit existed because of the merit of the photographer, not the photographs. Baryshnikov continues to be a powerful force in the dance world, but succeeds far more in front of the lens than behind it.
Allison Slater is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and works for a private educational company in New York City. She can be reached at allison.slater@gmail.com.