In the 1930s Hoppe photographed a number of dancers at the Vic-Wells company including Margot Fonteyn, Ninette de Valois, Hermione Darnborough and Beatrice Appleyard. The Vic-Wells is now know as the The Royal Ballet. It is an internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the four major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded in 1931 by Dame Ninette de Valois, it became the resident ballet company of the Royal Opera House in 1946 and was granted a royal charterin 1956, becoming recognised as Britain's flagship national ballet company. Hoppe captured a series of dance portraits. By focusing on the face rather than the body, the portraits enable access to the dancer’s state of mind.
Below are some exmaples of Hoppe's dance portraits.
Olga Spessivtseva as Aurora in 'The Sleeping Princess', 1921
Hoppe has captured the softness in her eyes as she gazed at you. The position Spessivtseva is sat makes her look vunerable and shy.
Margot Fonteyn, 1935
The gaze in Fonteyn eyes is more striking, shoulders back and head up shows her confident and strong but also give you the feel of her looking down at you.
Portrait of Ballerina Vera Fokina, 1920
Fokina body position give you the impression of confidence but shyness as well and softness as she looks up towards the light away from the camera but her shoulder is back so she is not intimidated.
I would like to try and capture some portraits of dancers with no emotion on their face and without any make-up or hair products to make them look different than what they are. When performing dancers will put make-up and style there hair but I want to capture that without and any of that.
Below are some more examples of Hoppe dance images.
No comments:
Post a Comment