PHOTOS: The Dance of Intimacy

Israeli artist Nir Arieli’s photographs of top dance companies for his solo exhibition, “Flocks” at New York's Daniel Cooney Fine Art, depict a collaborative intimacy that dancers have despite racial and cultural differences.

Showcased are the Nederlands Dans Theater II, Batsheva Dance Company, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, Ballet Hispanico, Pontus Lidberg Dance, Ailey II (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater) and the all-male Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. The Martha Graham Dance Company and MADBOOTS dance were also photographed for the series.

“The dance company is a social sphere in which the dancers live, love, and work,”Arieli says. “This body of work is my search for what remains in the dancers’ bodies when the dance stops. When movement is drained from the body and the performative purpose is removed, only the possibility of movement that lies beneath the surface remains.”

“Despite the companies’great differences in culture, heritage, and sensibility, the resulting photographs all had a shared quality, revealing something fundamental about how dancers physically communicate,”Arieli says.

"Flocks," Daniel Cooney Fine Art, 508-526 W. 26th St., New York 10001. April 21-June 4

See our previous coverage on Nir Arieli here.
Find Nir Arieli on his web site, Facebook, Tumblr, and Flickr.

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