Dance Through the Decades

For my final draft, I decided to take the advice of my teacher and edit my pictures in a way in which all of the dancers appeared to be on the same stage. Like before, I wanted to showcase the different styles of dance that have been popular throughout the 20th and 21st centuries: Fred Astaire for the beginning of the century, Soul Train for the 70s, Michael Jackson for the end of the 20th century, contemporary for the current era, and ballet to encompass all years that dance has been popular. I also included the picture of my feet again to illustrate how dance influences our everyday lives. As for the set up of the actual collage itself, I wanted ballet to be in the middle as it influences all styles of dance and has remained a staple in the dance community for years. The other dancers are scattered around the stage to demonstrate how all styles of dance influence each other and they are all interconnected in a way. As for the images in the back, the subjects of the pictures were not full body so I could not cut them out in the same way as the others, so I decided to blend them into the curtain. A lot of the dance recitals I have attended over the years have had some sort of imagery on the back curtain so I thought this was an appropriate way to still incorporate these pictures into the collage while staying within the theme. I once again used black and white over everything in order to blend all the pictures together and give the same timeless effect as the first collage. I also changed saturation and brightness a bit to make it more cohesive and more convincing that they were all on the same stage. Overall I wanted this collage to display the distinct different types of dance that have been popular over the years, but also convey how they all are intertwined and influence one another. All links to the images used will be in the footnote of this post.

Ekaterina Kondaurova of Mariinsky Ballet performs in the “Diamonds” segment of George Balanchine’s “Jewels.”(Natasha Razina / State Academic Mariinsky Theatre) https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2019-10-24/things-to-do-in-la-phil-mariinsky-ballet-psycho-halloween

Elements Contemporary Ballet dancer Chloe Duryea. Photo by Topher Alexander. https://seechicagodance.com/organization/elements-contemporary-ballet

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in George Stevens’s Swing Time (1936) https://www.publicbooks.org/shadow-dancing-with-zadie-smith/

Kevin Mazur/WireImage https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/rolling-stone-readers-pick-their-10-favorite-dancing-musicians-18885/

Soul Train Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/dance-dance-revolution-nelson-george-on-soul-train-242224/

This collage embodies just a few of the many different styles of dance that have been popular throughout the decades. Starting with the picture in the lower right corner, I wanted to highlight the popular dance styles of the early part of the decade, specifically the 20s-30s with Fred Astaire one of the most prevalent dancers of the time. Moving then to the upper left corner I wanted to show the shift in styles as the decade progressed and chose this picture from the show Soul Train to illustrate the popular dance style of the 70s, disco. Then moving down to the bottom left I chose a picture of Michael Jackson, as he was someone who redefined dance throughout his career which covered the last three decades of the 20th century. The picture in the middle left is a picture of a contemporary dancer, a style that has become much more prevalent in these first two decades of the 21st century. To the right of the contemporary dancer is a ballerina whose style of dance has been prominent throughout all the decades previously mentioned which is why I think it is a very important style to include in this collage. Finally, in the upper right corner, there is a picture of my own feet in converse doing a dance pose which I thought would be neat to include because all of these styles of dance, I believe, influence our movement in our normal lives every day. I put all of the pictures in black and white to give them a timeless effect and so that they would all blend together more seamlessly. Overall, I wanted to combine the many different styles of dance that have been popular over the years to make a visual for the topic of this blog. All links to the images used will be in the footnote of this post.

Ekaterina Kondaurova of Mariinsky Ballet performs in the “Diamonds” segment of George Balanchine’s “Jewels.”(Natasha Razina / State Academic Mariinsky Theatre) https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2019-10-24/things-to-do-in-la-phil-mariinsky-ballet-psycho-halloween

Elements Contemporary Ballet dancer Chloe Duryea. Photo by Topher Alexander. https://seechicagodance.com/organization/elements-contemporary-ballet

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in George Stevens’s Swing Time (1936) https://www.publicbooks.org/shadow-dancing-with-zadie-smith/

Kevin Mazur/WireImage https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/rolling-stone-readers-pick-their-10-favorite-dancing-musicians-18885/

Soul Train Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/dance-dance-revolution-nelson-george-on-soul-train-242224/