Casgliadau Arlein

“My 11 year old son is a ballet dancer. He moves with incredible grace and beauty. He has been passionate about movement and dance for his whole life. Prior to lockdown, he was training with his local ballet school twice a week and once a week he would travel from South Wales to Bath to train as a Junior Associate with the Royal Ballet School. At the start of April, he was supposed to be competing in a ballet competition in Bristol. He’d trained for months to learn a new dance and then lockdown happened. At first, we weren’t sure how long it would be for and everything was in disarray. We soon realised that we could be locked down at home for months and so it was important to try and establish some sort of training regime for him, so that he didn’t get out of practice. His local teacher and the Royal Ballet School began to send training videos and I would sit in the lounge and watch him practice. Sometimes he’d do the classes in his pyjama’s with is gorgeous long hair flying around as he danced. Watching him one day, I realised that I wanted to capture him in this way. To remember this strange time and to show the stunning beauty of his movements in the ordinary setting of a family home. I’m usually an outdoor photographer and so it was a challenge to look around my house and find locations that I thought would work. I wanted to show the juxtaposition between the mundanity of a house in lockdown and the beauty of ballet. I knew that I wanted to capture the shadow of the window frame on the carpet in the lounge and the lines of the sideboard, alongside his flowing movements. This meant I had to wait until late afternoon for the sun to be in the right position. I didn’t want him to wear his formal ballet uniform of leotards and tights, with his hair in a bun. I wanted to show the informality of setting, so he went bare foot, wore a t-shirt and left his hair down. We planned a few different poses and practiced them before the actual shoot to make sure there was enough room and that it looked right on camera.” (Gemma Griffiths).