When I first came across this image on Flickr (where Tim and I first connected) this is what I wrote:
“This image has been staying in my mind for weeks as I’ve been wondering how to express its effect on me… As someone who loves ballet I found it rather shocking, rather profane at first, but on second blush, it’s really quite witty and ingenious...
...The way the skirt is positioned and flares (seemingly over hips) and brushes the ground creates the illusion of a full-length romantic tutu — just enough to be quite disorienting, so that as the eye rises the legs become some strange appendages on an alien creature.
At the same time the image strikes me as a brilliant illustration of Balanchine’s famous dictum “Ballet is Woman” – not only making that point bluntly by confronting us with her sex where one would expect to meet a face, but also in emphasizing that prime attraction of ballet: a ballerina’s legs. They tower majestically, commandingly, like icons to revere. That’s my kind of cross.”
😁👍
... and the rest is history ;)