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My pas de deux

Leysis Quesada

I was always drawn towards dancing as a little girl. I loved to swirl and did several exercises related to ballet without having the faintest idea at the time that they were ballet moves. Like most young girls, I would stand in front of the mirror, but to dance, and sometimes also to act. That said, I never had an opportunity to formally train at a school or even a workshop until I was twelve years old — a little too late to be a ballet dancer.

I spent the first few years of my growing years in a batey (small sugar mill settlement in Cuba), where only about fifty families lived. There was one small school and only a few hours of electricity everyday, thanks to an oil plant that was turned on sparingly. Consequently, any formal ballet was a long shot from there.

I embarked on this personal project when Avril, my daughter began studying ballet at the Cuban National Ballet School in Havana. For the uninitiated, it is the largest and some say, the most prestigious ballet institution in the world. So, in a way, Avril’s pursuit of ballet has made my dreams come true as well. I have also enjoyed painting a lot and with a slightly better hand, I would have been a painter. But, I have found my calling as a photographer and through it the means to be plugged into the art world. Edgar Degas has been one of my favorite painters — his pastel work on ballerinas have been a long-time inspiration for me to discover something about the human condition and life of dancers, and people in general.

Ballet dancers live a life of much restraint and limitations. They may not always fully grasp their unique world, one which they often enjoy but is also full of disappointment and complexity. Many young ballerinas suffer psychological trauma and most lose a part of their childhood, forced to mature too quickly. It is the price a dancer has to pay for starting a career at nine or ten years of age, while the rest of their peers do so at eighteen. Perhaps for this very reason, when I photograph dancers, I try to make it a fun session for them and not another chore they must do. The shooting process as well as the photographic results have to be an enjoyable time in an otherwise regimented and constrained day.

As part of my own discovery process with dancers, I try to create a dialog with my subjects, who on many recent occasions have been my daughters on our rooftop terrace or around the neighborhood. My primary interest lies in making images of ballet dancers in their “off-performance” moments — when they are resting, seeking inspiration off-stage, drop their guard down, and are beyond the instances of perfection. Like Degas, I too realize that life for these dancers is not without flaws and it is that imperfect candor I seek to portray in my images.

I only shoot stage performance scenes when a dancer or the company asks me to. Those are postcard-perfect, well lit, and poetic frames, yet the dancers are never relaxed and their posed pauses offer a similar photographic opportunity to any photographer present there. I rather prefer to work with my images behind-the-scenes, where the stage is more chaotic, complex, and dramatic, but more importantly also sincere and inherent. I can also be closer to dancers and move in and out of their space to create my own compositions. At the end of it all, I’m looking to make the experience fun and enjoyable for them while capturing a moment of their inspiration. I am immensely moved by the contrast of the dancer’s natural beauty and Havana’s no-holds-barred settings. It is perhaps one of the factors behind what makes dancers here some of the best in the world of ballet.

我的双人舞

Leysis Quesada

我小时候总是喜欢跳舞。我喜欢旋转，做了几个与芭蕾有关的练习，当时我一点也不知道它们是芭蕾动作。像大多数年轻女孩一样，我会站在镜子前，但会跳舞，有时也会演戏。也就是说，在我十二岁之前，我从来没有机会在一所学校甚至一个工作室正式接受训练——对于成为一名芭蕾舞者来说，这有点太晚了。

我成长的最初几年是在一个只有大约50户人家居住的小糖厂度过的。有一所小学校，每天只有几个小时的电力供应，这要归功于一家节省电力的石油工厂。因此，任何正式的芭蕾舞都是不可能的。

当我的女儿艾薇儿开始在哈瓦那的古巴国家芭蕾舞学校学习芭蕾舞时，我开始了这个个人项目。对于门外汉来说，它是世界上最大的，有人说是最负盛名的芭蕾舞机构。所以，在某种程度上，艾薇儿对芭蕾的追求也让我的梦想成真。我也很喜欢画画，如果我的手稍微好一点，我就会成为一名画家。但是，我已经找到了我作为一名摄影师的职业，并通过它找到了融入艺术界的途径。埃德加·德加一直是我最喜欢的画家之一——他关于芭蕾舞女演员的粉彩作品长期以来一直激励着我去发现一些关于舞蹈演员和普通人的生活状况的东西。

芭蕾舞演员过着非常克制和受限制的生活。他们可能并不总是完全掌握他们独特的世界，一个他们经常享受但也充满失望和复杂的世界。许多年轻的芭蕾舞演员遭受心理创伤，大多数人失去了童年的一部分，被迫太快成熟。这是一个舞者在九岁或十岁时开始职业生涯必须付出的代价，而其他同龄人在十八岁时就开始了。也许正是因为这个原因，当我拍摄舞蹈演员时，我试图让他们觉得这是一次有趣的会议，而不是他们必须做的另一件家务。拍摄过程和拍摄结果必须是一个在一个严格和受限的日子里的愉快时光。

作为我自己与舞者的发现过程的一部分，我试图与我的受试者创造一个对话，在最近的许多场合，他们是我在屋顶露台或附近的女儿。我的主要兴趣在于制作芭蕾舞演员在“表演之外”时刻的形象——当他们休息时，在舞台之外寻找灵感，放松警惕，超越完美的实例。像德加一样，我也意识到这些舞者的生活并非没有瑕疵，而是我试图在我的图像中描绘的不完美的坦率。

我只在舞蹈演员或公司要求时拍摄舞台表演场景。这些都是明信片般完美、光线充足、富有诗意的画面，然而舞者们从未放松过，他们摆好姿势的停顿为在场的任何摄影师提供了类似的摄影机会。我更喜欢在幕后处理我的图像，那里的舞台更加混乱、复杂和戏剧性，但更重要的是也是真诚和固有的。我也可以更靠近舞者，进出他们的空间来创作自己的作品。在这一切的最后，我希望让他们的体验变得有趣和愉快，同时捕捉他们的灵感时刻。舞者的自然美和哈瓦那无拘无束的环境形成的对比让我非常感动。这也许是让这里的舞者成为世界上最优秀的芭蕾舞演员的原因之一。

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