Appalachian Spring III

Photography: Digital, C-type on Aluminium.

Dance of Hope: Hymn to Martha Graham's ballet 'Appalachian Spring’

 My triptych 'Dance of Hope' pays homage to American dancer and choreographer Martha Graham and evokes her pioneering ballet 'Appalachian Spring’.

 The subtitle ‘Hymn' references the composer Aaron Copland who worked collaboratively with Graham on the score. The barefoot dancer, Mia Shane re-imagines Graham's lead role as The Pioneer Woman in a 21st Century outdoor space.

Shane and I chose to stage the new ballet in a quintessentially English garden overlooking the River Thames. We included the stone pedestal to signify Isamu Noguchi's spare set design.

The narrative takes place in spring, a time of new beginnings. The sequence of three still photographs attempts to capture the dancer's natural movement. She wears an ordinary summer dress and dances barefoot on the grass.

As an amateur student of Gabrielle Roth's 5Rhythms, I also wanted to produce her 'momentum of meditation' through the 'action of art’. Shane and I hoped to forge a new collaborative artwork that encourages environmental concern. We wanted to present a place of beauty showing a solitary figure - a nymph or deity - as the custodian of Mother Earth.

'Dance of Hope' is both a hymn to Martha Graham and a prayer for the natural world.

The digital photograph is a C-type metallic print mounted on aluminium with a subframe that fixes to the wall ready to hang.

Limited edition of 195, signed, numbered and dated. 

Comes with certificate of authenticity.