After The Ballet

This project explores the often unseen struggles and mistreatment faced by dancers, focusing on the physical and emotional toll that lies behind the elegance of performance. While ballet is often associated with beauty, discipline and control, I wanted to challenge that image by revealing the more complex, hidden realities that dancers endure.

I was particularly drawn to the idea of constraint. The way dancers are often confined by tradition, expectation, and the demands placed on their bodies. To represent this, I looked at the structure of frames, using them as a visual metaphor for how dancers are physically and emotionally held in place. Frames became a symbol of pressure and limitation, capturing the sense of being looked at but not always seen, admired but not always cared for.

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In contrast, I also explored the concept of freedom — specifically the emotional release dancers might feel after a performance, when the spotlight fades and they are no longer being watched. I used bouquets as a symbol for this moment of release and appreciation. Flowers, often thrown at the end of a show, represent a kind of softness and fleeting celebration. For me, they also hinted at the fragility and transience of performance, and the way beauty can be both freeing and heavy to carry.

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Through textiles, I tried to express the push and pull between these two ideas. I used layering, fraying, and delicate hand embroidery to reflect both vulnerability and resilience — the strength it takes to hold oneself together under pressure, and the quiet softness that exists beneath the surface. The result is a body of work that aims to honour the emotional complexity of ballet, while questioning the systems that uphold its ideals.