Street Artist JR Creates a New Installation for the New York City Ballet

Photographed by Lili Holzer-Glier

» SEE THE SLIDESHOW «

Despite a relatively recent face-lift from Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Lincoln Center is about as staid an architectural landmark as this city has to offer. It’s not for nothing that the plaza recalls the Piazza del Campidoglio on Rome’s Capitoline Hill, both in its tripartite design and function as the de facto headquarters for New York’s performing arts establishment. Even the street-style circus that is New York Fashion Week takes place around, rather than within, those magisterial edifices.

So it might surprise intrepid pedestrians braving the polar vortex to witness the sprawling mass of cloudlike forms and pointe shoe–clad feet that has been installed on the façade of the David H. Koch Theater for the duration of New York City Ballet’s winter season, which opened last night.

The images are one part of the company’s 2014 Art Series, a collaboration with the street artist JR, whose similar installations are more commonly found on the sides of homes in Brazilian favelas and dilapidated buildings on the outskirts of Paris. Inside the theater, ballet patrons will find a 6,500-square-foot composite image of NYCB dancers depicted nearly life-size that, when seen from above, form a giant eye, one of JR’s best-known motifs. In the orchestra level rings of the theater are, furthermore, ink–on–wood transfer images that seem like ghostly visions of dancers, recalling the building’s redecorated façade. 

“I’d never seen ballet before,” the 30-year-old French artist says, overseeing final preparations from the fourth floor of the Koch Theater in his trademark sunglasses, while the company rehearsed Balanchine’s Who Cares? inside the auditorium and apprentices in rehearsal gear excitedly pirouetted across the eye below. “I realized that I couldn’t see the faces of the dancers [from the audience]. I couldn’t see their eyes, so I wanted to make them sculpt one.” In groups of eight to ten, NYCB dancers gathered in between rehearsals at an on-site studio and allowed JR to photograph them lying in various positions, pulling and pushing against paper sets that form the composition of the enormous eye that is now on view on the floor of the promenade.

Besides the immense scale of the project, the egalitarian nature of JR’s casting—principal dancers are featured side-by-side members of the corps de ballet—is particularly notable for a traditional company like NYCB, where roles are rigid and promotions are competitive. “I didn’t want to choose one person that would be the highlight,” JR observes. There’s Robert Fairchild, outstretched at the outskirts of the picture. There’s Janie Taylor, her celebrated legs curled up in a fetal position. “It’s a whole company, so I wanted everyone to be a part of it.”

Did it matter that JR was such a ballet neophyte? Not at all, says ballet master Peter Martins. “He became totally immersed in the world of the New York City Ballet . . . I think the enormous scale of JR’s work is a perfect complement to the grand scale of the space.” The artist was similarly unconcerned. “Something I said right at the beginning was, ‘I don’t know anything about ballet movements, so you can be like this on the floor, or that,’ ” JR says with a shrug. “I can’t tell the difference; I just know if it’s the right shot.”

The full 2014 Art Series collaboration will be on view during performances on January 23, February 7, and February 13; nycballet.com

by Mark Guiducci