"The Dying Swan" (2025)

Ballet, and its principal ballerinas, is a sport that has existed for centuries and yet turns over rapidly. The women who headline the famous ballets train from the time they are around three or four, with serious training beginning around age eight until they are hired as a principal dancer around twenty. During those years, dancers ask their bodies to go beyond their limit for the sake of art, and during those golden years of their career, they make the company. However, ballerinas typically retire in their mid-thirties due to strain their bodies can no longer handle in tandem with emotional burnout. Once they retire, these ballerinas who once danced on a pedestal in the eye of the public are forgotten and replaced by someone new. The question, then, is who remembers the ballerinas of days past whose influence should not be forgotten? The Dying Swan asks audience members to pay attention to the prima ballerinas from the past century and implores them to not forget them the way history has. Projecting into a music box illustrates a familiar image for audiences that are familiar with the ballerina spinning in the box when it opens, while in tandem evoking the idea of things of old being left on the shelf to collect dust.