Balletscene

Harald Giersing, 1920-1921

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Artist: Harald Giersing (Danish, 1881–1927)
Medium: Oil on plywood
Size: 134 × 134.5 cm
Museum: SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
Rights: Public Domain Mark

Ballet Scene is based on a black-and-white photograph of two dancers from the modern Russian ballet: the couple Michel Fokine and Vera Fokina. Harald Giersing found the photograph in the daily newspaper Politiken, which printed it on the occasion of the couple’s sensational performance at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen in May 1918. Michel Fokine was one of the great reformers of ballet of the time: his ballets were seen as distinctly modern reinterpretations of a classical art form.

In them, several younger, experimental visual artists found a parallel to their own efforts to renew the classic visual media. Giersing’s Ballet Scene evokes meanings associated with modern Russian ballet, particularly the strong interplay between scenography, music and choreography. The result is a fabulously powerful image: the two figures have been pared back to become decorative silhouettes, placed on a plain red background. With its strong reinterpretation of its subject matter, the image becomes a rhythmic ornament – and a highlight in Giersing’s production (50 Favorites in the SMK Collection).