Secret Passion

As some of you know, I am an art major with an emphasis in photograpy. I would consider myself an average photographer, nothing amazing.  But I do love to look at other people's photographs and at works of art in general.  In fact, I would love to work in an art museum.  Well, one day I was looking at one of my art books and found a picture that I loved.  The composition was beautiful and the contrast of values impeccable, but that wasn't what truly caught my eye.  This is the picture I saw.  The photographer is one of my favorites, Rodney Smith.

What really caught my eye was the grace and beauty that these two women held themselves with.  I've always loved ballet dancers and how beautiful they are.  They wear beautiful dresses, they are slim and graceful, strong and felxible.  I love photo's of ballerina's and here are a few that I really love. 

Photo by Rodney Smith.

And another photo by Rodney Smith...

This is not Rodney Smith, but I really loved it.

If you get really bored, I found this video awhile ago and still love it.  This is from a ballet called La Bayadere.  I'll give a very short background up to this point in the ballet.  The main character Nikiya is a dancer.  She falls in love with a warrior by the name of Solor and the High Brahmin (basically a high priest) is in love with Nikiya.  The High Brahmin finds out about the relationship between Nikiya and Solor.  Solor is selected to be the Rajah's daughter's fiance' and the jealous High Brahmin tries to get Solor killed by telling the Rajah about the relationship.  However, this backfires and the Rajah declares that Nikiya is the one to die.  Nikiya agreed to dance at a feast, not knowing that it is Solor's and the Rajah's daughters engagement feast.  At the feast, Nikiya (dressed in orange) begins with a somber dance, very mournful.  After a little while, she is given a basket of flowers that she believes to be from Solor (green outfit) and begins a very joyous dance.  However, the flowers are not from Solor, they are from the Rajah (fancy crown thing-blue outfit) and his daughter (purple dress) and in the basket is a poisonous snake that bites Nikiya.  The High Brahmin (orange outfit-big headdress) offers Nikiya an antidote, but Nikiya refuses it because she cannot be with her true love.  This dance is called Morte de Nikiya and the dancer playing Nikiya is Isabelle Guerin.  I'm sorry if that was a confusing summary!  The clip is about 7 minutes long so you don't have to watch all of it or even any of it.  I just like this clip.