Fifteen-year-old Katya starred for the first time in a summer Ballet Gala in the Sierra foothills. Could you imagine – fifteen years old? The pressure of performing, of keeping your body in shape to achieve the most miraculous physical feats, yet avoiding over-stressing it – and all in fifteen years of age! The audience sat astonished to see a girl execute effortlessly what they would never dream of doing.
Bernard Berenson said that the ballet gives us standards of men and women as beautiful as we should like to be. As a Roseville photographer, I certainly second that, seated in the far corner of the risers and clicking my way through the performance. Katya embodied the idyllic maiden, as if pulled out from a fairytale and put on stage for us to behold and wonder. The event was awe-inspiring and uplifting.
Katya performed a scene from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Ballet, a fitting piece for the coming Christmas holidays. She is also a fitting age, because the leading role is supposed to be a girl. (You often see it performed by older dancers who pretend to be young and succeed to various degrees) To those of you living in Roseville, I recommend attending the San Francisco Ballet version of this, which they stage at the end of each year.
And such is the labor of the photographer: out of thousands of clicks that night (I hope those seated near me in the audience forgive the shutter-click nuisance) I have boiled the selection down to a handfull. Here they are, in the body of this post, for your inspiration.
