Balancing Acts: Lucy Gray Photographs Ballerina Moms

Lucy Gray Photography: Balancing Acts: What Being Mothers Has Done for Three Prima Ballerinas.

Photographer Lucy Gray still remembers the day she ran into her first ballerina mom.

“I was walking with my son and his friend to the market, and a very strange, beautiful, ethereal-looking woman came up to my son’s friend with her husband and their child,” she recalls. “When I took the daughter home, I said to her mother that we had met these people and she said, ‘Do you know who they are?’ And I said no. My friend said, ‘That’s Katita Waldo, who’s a prima ballerina at the San Francisco Ballet.’ Immediately I thought, ‘Great subject,’ as a photographer.”

Gray was so struck by the image of the beautiful dancer and her son that she got in touch with Waldo and discovered that there were two other principal dancers who had children. So Gray contacted the San Francisco Ballet proposing a photography project that would document the dancers’ lives with their families onstage and off.

To her surprise, the company not only agreed, but gave Gray wide access to their usually closed classes, rehearsals, and backstage.

“I was deeply impressed that San Francisco Ballet wanted to do it because that’s just a first,” she says. “It’s a first that all these ballerinas are having babies and they’re encouraging them to have a personal life. It’s a first that they want to celebrate this.”

For two years, Gray photographed Katita Waldo, Kristin Long and Tina LeBlanc in rehearsal, in performance, on tour in Europe, even went home with the dancers. The result is a series of intimate portraits, which she hopes will be published as a book entitled “Balancing Acts: What Being Mothers has Done for Three Prima Ballerinas.”

In the process, Gray not only developed a new respect for the beauty and strength of the dancers, but also watched as they grew with their young families. And she observed not just the closeness of the mothers and children, but also the unwavering support of their spouses, such as Long’s husband, Michael Locicero.

“He brought Kai to watch Kristin dance all the time for a year or two, and I mean rehearsals, dress rehearsals, the nights out, everything. And the truth is, that made Kristin as a dancer,” she says emphatically. “I watched her blossom under their gaze. Because her family was there, she felt so excited and connected and happy and loved. Nothing could have nurtured her more than have her family growing and being with her like that. It was pretty wonderful.”

Although Gray has approached other major companies as well with the same proposal, San Francisco Ballet and their ballerinas remains the primary focus of her project.

“I wanted the top performers at the top companies. I wanted the best of the best, because I wanted to show that you could still be the best of the best and have a real life.”