Balancing Acts - Ballerinas become mothers
While photographer Lucy Gray had always admired working mothers, she saw ballerinas as uniquely self-centered and immature. But once we she began documenting the lives of three world-class prima ballerinas at San Francisco Ballet, her prejudice melted as she discovered their strength and dedication to both dance and motherhood. Fifteen years of intimate photographs have culminated in her beautiful and inspiring series "Balancing Acts".
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[MUSIC]
My perception of ballerinas as a feminist was that they were starving
themselves for their job.
That they were doing what they did for
a man that was telling them what to do.
That they didn't wanna grow up.
But as a photographer, your job is to hunt down your prejudices,
[LAUGH] and get rid of them.
My name is Lucy Gray.
And I'm a photographer from San Francisco, California.
And this is my Flickr moment.
[SOUND] I happen to go to the market with my son and his friend.
And we met this extraordinary looking woman who was carrying her child.
She looked sort of ghostly, because she was so pale and so thin, but
she was extremely beautiful.
And when I took the friend home, her mother said, do you know who that was?
She's a prima ballerina at San Francisco Ballet.
And I said I want to photograph her.
It turned out to be a 15-year project.
Balancing Acts is about three prima ballerinas becoming mothers.
It's Katita Waldo, Kristin Long, and Tina LeBlanc at San Francisco Ballet.
It's about the difficulty.
It's about the joy.
It's about, in their case,
how being both made them more successful at both.
Ballerinas start dancing when they're three.
By the time they're 11,
they've decided that that's what they wanna do as careers.
At 14, they're doing it.
When these women, at 30,
decide to have children, they're taking a huge chance.
Because they're the breadwinners for their families.
If their bodies can't take it,
they lose their living, and they don't know how to do anything else.
Katita had stage fright after she had her son.
One of the ballerina's marriage came apart.
They divorced.
They're at the top of their field.
What they're doing is incredibly hard, but they're succeeding.
They're extremely dedicated and that dedication
turned out to apply to being a mother as well as being a dancer.
After they had children,
they all got to be better dancers, which was the biggest surprise for me.
I really admire them, I really believe in what they've done.
They taught me [LAUGH] so much about ballet.
I think it's a great career now.
I, I never would have imagined that.
I wanted to make an appropriate tribute to them.
I wanted to have a book.
Its the gift that I could give them, which they deserve.
I hope people take away from this book that being a working mother,
having a job can make you a better mother.
And being a mother can make you better at your occupation.
But I also hope people take away the pleasure,
the joy in these women's experience.
[MUSIC]
