In 2018, the New York City Ballet invited Shantell Martin to create a large scale art installation in collaboration for the company’s annual Art Series. She began with a series of one-on-one interviews with the company’s dancers to build empathy between artist and subject, seeking to understand the dancers’ relationship to their body, the company and the process of nurturing the vulnerability of self expression. As an artist devoted to her own rules of engagement -- lines and primarily monochromatic black and white imagery -- Martin found relatability in the structure and tradition of dance, the rules of choreography and parameters of a ballet company. She carefully observed movement across various genres from traditional Nutcracker rehearsals to the original contemporary pieces of resident choreographer Justin Peck, and her lines changed with the energy of each piece, until “the dancers turned to lines and shapes, and faces began to disappear.”
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