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Leutwyler: Capturing Ballet from the Inside

Janos Gereben on December 11, 2012
Leutwyler's photo from the wings at NYC Ballet during Balanchine's <em>Serenade</em>
Leutwyler's photo from the wings at NYC Ballet during Balanchine's Serenade

"Much in the way Edgar Degas captured the backstage realities and onstage glory of the dancers in the Paris Opera Ballet in his impressionist paintings, a New York city photographer has chronicled the everyday scenes of dancers in the New York City Ballet in an upstairs/downstairs-like collection," says a Daily Mail story about Henry Leutwyler.

Allowed unprecedented and unfettered access to the workings of the company for 30 days, Leutwyler compiled his work into Ballet, a 488-page book with more than 270 photographs.

These beautiful, often haunting, photos of dancers back stage and from the front row fill the book; fulfilling a passion for the art form that has consumed the photographer for more than 30 years.

Selections of his pieces are also on display at the Foley Gallery in New York.