On a rainy New York City Thursday, wedged between the chill of winter and the desperation for summer heat, a crowd gathered in a Lower East Side gallery. It was the kind of rain that called for an umbrella but not enough that if it were to disappear in a soggy pile stacked by the door, you wouldn’t mind walking home without it.
Inside it was warm, the air honeyed with affection and attention. Cassandra Trenary’s intimate photojournalism capturing the in-betweenness of dance is breadcrumbed around the small L-shaped room. Varying in size and orientation, each piece has a thick white margin around its subject, a frame catching a blip in time.
Trenary is a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, although soon to venture to Vienna State Opera in the fall, and has been photographing dance for years; her photography handle @pearltakespics dates back to 2018.
For her inaugural showing, she had so much content to choose from that although the small space was originally set to hold 40 pieces, Ivan Shaw (photography director of Vogue US for 20 years) who co-curated the exhibition with Trenary, urged her to display 100. I am very glad she did.
The photo directly to the left of the entrance is of Trenary’s reflection in a mirror, camera in hand, a fitting welcome into her lens. Rather than moving through the space linearly, I found myself bouncing from wall to wall; the images offering easy, rhizomatic entry points into Trenary’s keen eye.
The pieces themselves are terrestrial, unguarded, and honest. Trenary resists the impulse to present ballet dancers in typical “beautiful” moments (a leap, a turn, a lift) and instead catches the in between, the anxious before and the breathy after of a performance.
In a recent phone conversation, she shared:
“My friend Lucie March said… what she was really gravitating towards were the images that only somebody who knows it and understands it intimately could capture. Those intimate, exhausted, isolating, sometimes joyful, sometimes relief, sometimes caught [moments].
It actually got me writing about what it feels like to be on stage, immerse myself in a story, and then feel so vulnerable and like an open wound. And then to exit the stage and feel out of my body and not really sure what to do with myself. And that’s kind of where the title of the show came from: Embodied.
I was thinking about how so much of our life as a dancer is to embody other people’s choreography, worlds, ideas, stories, characters, emotions. And then when we leave, how challenging it is to then embody myself again.“
Dancers are performers on stage but there are other places they camouflage themselves. The ritual before a show is a sort of performance. The many rehearsals leading up to the show are mini performances. The stage door greetings post-show, yet another version. How often does a dancer put on their mask?
In Trenary’s work the masks are off, the dancers are themselves: exhausted, contemplative, seductive, raw.
Cassandra Trenary’s Embodied Art Exhibit at the PRIV.Y Gallery in NYC
One of Trenary’s favorite photos is near the front of the exhibit. An unassuming capture of ABT corps de ballet dancer Hannah Marshall in a Swan Lake headpiece and warmups sitting next to a door which takes up most of the center frame. Trenary explains:
“Just the corner of the frame is her face. And the sun is actually on the door. And it’s the door that leads to the hallway that leads to backstage.
I remember seeing that moment and wanting her to be in the corner, because it was this door looming over us. We have to go back out there, but it’s, like, show number 25. And we just need a moment to sit on the ground.”
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The Grey Swan: Where Retired Dancers Take the Stage Again
"This isn't nostalgia. This is ballet," states Camilla Spidsøe, choreographer for The Grey Swan, a performance to take place in Oslo on May 13, 2025.
These days, it feels like every on-screen portrayal of ballet is fixated on the “gritty” side of the art form (I would be happy to never hear that word used to describe ballet again). But these portrayals often miss the authentic details that make a ballet dancer’s life distinct. It takes a deep relationship to the art form to recognize the quiet symbolism of a doorway, measuring the pressure and the potential.
Trenary captures her truth of what ballet and camaraderie is – the images are all of her friends and colleagues at ABT – and proves her natural instincts are just as good off stage as on.
And like every driven artist, those sharp intuitions can’t go ignored.
When asked if there’s the possibility of an encore exhibit, Trenary replied:
“This was such a beautiful way to honor a very important chapter in my career and also share another form of expression that brings me so much joy. This was such a huge undertaking and I had so many sleepless nights. I would do it all over again.”
Featured Photo of Cassandra Trenary at The Privy Gallery NYC. Photo by Nadia Vostrikov.
