I have a slight obsession with ballerinas. Just a slight one. When I was 5 years old, I said I wanted to be a professional ballerina when I grew up. Well, as everyone knows I’m not a professional ballerina. I wasn’t put in dance classes, but my mother [wanted to torture me and] decorate my room with ballerina shoes and dancers. She probably shouldn’t have done that, because to this day I still have the smallest grudge against her for not putting me in dance class. My mom and I try to go to the Nutcracker ballet in Omaha every winter. I fly home that weekend just to go see it, and it’s always right around mom’s birthday. Well I happen to stumble upon this group on Facebook called The Ballerina Project. The photographer, Dan Shitagi, takes pictures of ballerinas against New York City & Boston’s urban landscape. I love it. The girls pose in either the most simple or the most intricate way. I’m wowed by every photo he puts on Facebook. So here are a few of my favorites, and I even ordered the first picture as a poster and have it framed. Check out The Ballerina Project’s Facebook page and Tumbler page.
—m.