Excellent excerpt: Jes's Chapa-Malacara's visual vocabulary of ballet vocabulary

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

For decades, photographers have been trying to achieve the impossible: to capture the mesmerizing movements of the dance in a single static image. Photographer Jesus Chapa-Malacara seems to have come close to solving this problem. His aerial series Dance Prints: Humans Slicing Through Space explores the language of dance with skill and endurance.

Within the framework of this project, Chapa-Malakara focused on two diametrically opposed types of dance: ballet and break dance. And if the first is distinguished by its clarity and grace, brought to perfection, then in the heart of the second there is unbridled expression. In "Imprints of Dance" this difference becomes obvious even to a person who does not understand at all the peculiarities of dance plastics: the frozen imprint of each step remains on paper even after the movement itself has ended. “It seems to me that they contrast very beautifully, shading each other, - says the photographer. - One is so straightforward and directed upwards, while the other's whole point is to be as close to the floor as possible, and even upside down. In the future, I would like to expand the project even more, both in scale and in content."

Before taking up photography, Chapa-Malakara was a professional dancer, so he knows from his own experience that even the simplest movement for the uninitiated observer hides intense work. Moreover, not only physical, but also intellectual: “Here's the thing, most people think that dance is primarily a set of cool tricks and poses, but in fact, dancers think much more about intermediate movement, transition from one position to another. So I thought, how can I tell this story?"

The resulting shots convey the continuity of movement surprisingly naturally, making the viewer feel like they are in the audience during a live performance.

Chapa-Malakara posted his project on Kickstarter to raise funds for further work. Its ultimate goal is to visualize the entire language of dance, and in particular ballet.

“Every photo you see is a piece of the 'word' in the language of ballet, all these little details that dancers spend years perfecting. So in the long term, I hope to create a visual vocabulary of ballet vocabulary,”explains the photographer.

Chapa-Malakara currently lives in New York. While the photographer complains about sky-high prices for everything, living in a metropolis definitely has its advantages. For example, he can easily get into the "Art Seasons" of the New York Ballet Company (NYCB Art Series).