Dancers sculpted to fit the program
Body artist Emma Hack has stripped the dancers of WA Ballet to their G-strings, painted them and moulded them as living sculptures to promote the company's next season.
Hack, who did the body painting for Gotye's film clip Somebody That I Used to Know, was commissioned by WA Ballet artistic director Aurelien Scannella to cluster the dancers into shapes symbolising each production in next year's program.
More than 20 dancers volunteered to be coated in metallic paint and photographed by the renowned Adelaide artist as one "being" to mimic the smooth liquidity of the metal mercury - a metaphor for dance.
One image represents the lovers Romeo and Juliet, another illustrates Giselle and another shows Snow White.
Scannella, who launched the season last night, said the dancers had been exhausted after the 12-hour picture shoot, which came after months of planning.
"It is certainly something they have not done before," he said. "It was not easy to pull that project together."
Next year will be the first season programmed by Scannella, who took the reins at WA Ballet in January. His program begins at Ballet at the Quarry with Romeo and Juliet set to music by Radiohead and closes with Snow White and the 7 Dwarves.
Emma Hack produces a golden age of WA Ballet. Pictures: Darren Clements
"Modernisation, innovation, tradition and freshness are the themes around which I built my program," Scannella said.
The final show this year is Peter Pan, which opens at His Majesty's Theatre on November 22.
