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Exhibitionists·Video

This breathtaking photography will make you wish you were a ballet dancer

Photographer Karolina Kuras grew up living and breathing ballet — and she's channelling that passion into creating stunning images.

'There was something emotional about it that really grabbed me'

March Mercanti · CBC Arts ·

This breathtaking photography will make you wish you were a ballet dancer

8 years ago
Duration 3:18
Photographer Karolina Kuras tells CBC Arts about how her childhood love of ballet inspired her visual arts career.

Photographing ballet requires a particular eye, and Karolina Kuras has had that since she was a kid.

Kuras grew up living and breathing ballet (or, as she would put it, "I was a complete bunhead"). While she still dances non-professionally today, Kuras has turned her attention to creating moody and elegant images of ballet dancers. But her background in dance has been vital: she knows the language and the movements, and the trust she's built with her subjects shines through in her images.

(Karolina Kuras)

In this video, we get to watch Kuras use her favourite vintage film camera to capture National Ballet of Canada dancer Clare Peterson. And it's just in time — Peterson is part of The National Ballet of Canada's Swan Lake at Toronto's Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, June 15-25. You can get tickets here.

Thank you to Clare Peterson (Corps De Ballet - National Ballet of Canada) and makeup artist Ashley Readings.

Watch Exhibitionists on Friday nights at 12:30am (1am NT) and Sundays at 3:30pm (4pm NT) on CBC Television.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

March Mercanti

As a young child, March Mercanti would play with his action figures for countless hours because he was obsessed with telling stories...to himself. Currently, March is a filmmaker living in Toronto, ON. He works at CBC Arts creating documentaries for artists across Canada.

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